In this Catalan 12-M campaign, Pedro Sánchez is very clear about what his electoral target is: Barcelona and its great metropolitan crown. And also what is his priority objective to push the expectations of the PSC candidate, former minister Salvador Illa: to try to mobilize the progressive electorate that is still abstaining. An electorate that was activated again in Catalonia in the last general elections of July 23, 2023, when the demoscopic threat that the Popular Party could add a sufficient majority with the far-right Vox to take Alberto Núñez Feijóo to Moncloa promoted that the leader of the PSOE managed to add almost a million more votes than in 2019 throughout Spain, which finally allowed him to revalidate the presidency of the Executive despite the electoral victory of the PP.
The PSOE leadership assures that its electoral strategy is based on trying to remove from abstention the progressive Catalan voter who does go to the electoral college in the general elections, but chooses to stay at home in the regional elections. And that latent vote that they are trying to awaken before 12-M, as they warn, is located mainly in Barcelona and its “red belt.” According to their calculations, mobilizing up to 200,000 or 300,000 extra votes in the epicenter of Catalonia can add up to two or three more seats for the PSC. And in Ferraz they already caress about a “historic result” for Illa, reaching 41 or 42 seats, compared to the 33 deputies that the PSC achieved in 2021. The “Illa effect”, driven by its management of the coronavirus pandemic as Minister of Health since 2020, led him to win the elections, although he could not achieve the presidency of the Generalitat.
The second time, they trust the PSOE, it's the charm. And, to do so, their intention is to convey to the socialist electorate of the general elections in Catalonia that their vote next Sunday for Illa will be “as important” as the one they gave for Sánchez last July. “We need two socialist presidents, in the Generalitat and in the Government of Spain, to provide solutions to the real problems of the Catalans,” they say in Ferraz.
Sánchez, therefore, focuses his electoral radius on Barcelona and the metropolitan area. The five days in April in which the President of the Government reflected on his continuity in office, however, forced him to suspend his participation in the start and first steps of the PSC campaign, as he already had on the agenda. . The leader of the PSOE thus canceled his planned presence in Sabadell, on April 25, and in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, on April 28. But the next day, April 29, he announced his determination to continue in office, and since then he has tried to make up for the time lost in the Catalan electoral campaign.
First he made a surprise appearance at the April Fair in Barcelona, on May 1, and the next day Sánchez took “a mass bath” at the first rally he participated in alongside Illa in Sant Boi de Llobregat. “Voters and members remain committed to him,” they warned in Ferraz. On May 4, the president stopped in Montmeló. And the final stretch of the campaign will take him to Vilanova i la Geltrú this Thursday, before closing this new electoral journey next Friday at the Vall d'Hebron Pavilion in Barcelona.
