“We are going to step on the accelerator”, they announce in Moncloa. This will be the reaction of Pedro Sánchez to try to weather the Andalusian storm. Not so much words as deeds. More Government, more management, more important initiatives. The slogan is to resist, endure the downpour, buy time, exhaust the legislature and trust that the wind turns to be able to take flight.
Today the Council of Ministers will approve new initiatives in employment and universities, before addressing more measures in the extension of the anti-crisis plan to mitigate the economic and energy effects of the war in Ukraine. Sánchez will return to Brussels on Wednesday, with a tight agenda, after submitting to the control of Congress. And he prepares the NATO summit in Madrid next week to the millimeter, as one of the great milestones of his mandate.
"The Government is strong, it is solid, and there is a legislature until the end," Sánchez himself assured before the PSOE executive, meeting yesterday in Ferraz to assess the magnitude of the tragedy suffered in the Andalusian elections. “Now what it touches is to demonstrate clearly that the Government is concerned about what the citizens are concerned about, which is to be able to solve the crisis derived from the war in Ukraine,” said the Chief Executive, according to what the spokesman later transmitted. of the PSOE, Felipe Sicilia. "And the best way to win the trust of citizens is to demonstrate with leftist and progressive policies that we are the alternative to the right."
In Moncloa they rule out that Sánchez is now going to provoke a new government crisis, such as the one he promoted after the electoral catastrophe suffered by the PSOE in Madrid in May 2021, which led to the departure of heavyweights such as Carmen Calvo, José Luis Ábalos or Ivan Round. The relays could take place in the face of the municipal and regional elections of May 2023, and not as a reaction to Sunday's defeat in Andalusia.
"There is no change of cycle," assured Sánchez, despite the fact that the electoral disaster in Andalusia is added to those in Castilla y León and the Community of Madrid. "The PP's strategy is to make believe that there is a change of cycle, but it is not like that," Sicilia reiterated. With one argument: "There is no transfer of votes." In other words, according to Ferraz's analysis, a good part of the socialist electorate did not bet on other parties on Sunday, but stayed at home. They also reject that 19-J expressed a "vote of punishment" to the Government. “These elections are not a wake-up call for Sánchez,” they insist. And they refuse to venture extrapolations. “You cannot extrapolate the result of regional elections to general ones. Citizens know how to distinguish the regional ones from the general ones, this time an autonomous government was at stake and the government's management was not evaluated at all, ”Sicilia defended. That will only be put to the test, therefore, in the next generals. "The management of the Government is the best guarantee that we socialists have," she assured.
But what went wrong then on Sunday? According to the analysis of Sánchez and his executive, there was an accumulation of "conditions", all adverse to the PSOE. In the first place, Sicilia acknowledged, "we have not been able to mobilize our electorate." In addition, the division of forces to the left of the PSOE led to the loss of votes and seats, and the electoral remains in many provinces benefited the PP, which also fully capitalized on the "disintegration" of Ciudadanos and recovered voters who in the last autonomic elections opted for Vox . And, to crown the disaster, that the candidacy of Juan Espadas barely had time to consolidate and make himself known, only seven months, after the process of replacing Susana Díaz in the Andalusian PSOE.
But Sánchez and the Ferraz leadership want to support Espadas at all costs, and avoid a new leadership crisis in the Andalusian federation, less than a year before the next municipal elections. The support for Espadas at the Ferraz meeting was thus "total and absolute." And the claim is that he now has four years as leader of the opposition in Andalusia to be able to consolidate his political project.
Some leaders, however, look askance at Susana Díaz, who still retained 38% of the votes in the primaries that Espadas won just a year ago, in June 2021. "No one has the party tied until it governs," they warn. But they believe that for now Díaz will not try to move Swords' chair, to first revalidate her seat as a senator by autonomous appointment. "Later -they warn-, we'll see".
