This text belongs to 'Penínsulas', the newsletter that Enric Juliana sends to the readers of 'La Vanguardia' every Tuesday. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
The conservative camp loses a representative, the progressive camp gains and things remain almost as they were. Nothing new in the power bloc that governs Galicia since the beginning of autonomy in 1981, with only two parentheses of not very long duration. To be more precise, the Popular Party loses two seats, the populist candidacy of Ourense gains one, and the left with parliamentary representation (Galego Nationalist Bloc and PSOE) gains one, as a whole. No news at the front. That could be a static and very schematic reading of Sunday's results. A reading that has a trick.
The conservative bloc and the progressive bloc are almost tied in popular vote. Partido Popular, Vox and Democracia Ourensana, which is the name of the platform invented by Mayor Gonzalo Pérez-Jácome, add up to 748,296 votes, 50.5%. The progressive bloc (BNG, PSOE, Sumar and Podemos) totals 706,790 votes, 47.7%. There is a difference of 41,506 votes between both blocks. If we consider the bottom lines of politics, Galicia is a society almost tied between right and left, with a certain conservative majority. If the electoral district were Galicia as a single district, the proportional system would give a much shorter advantage to the Popular Party in number of seats. But it's not like that. With an advantage of only 41,506 votes in the general count, the conservative bloc gains six seats ahead of the progressive bloc (at a rate of seven thousand votes per seat), thanks to an electoral law that offers greater representation to the provinces of Lugo and Ourense, and also thanks to the frenetic fragmentation of the progressive bloc that has thrown into the trash the few votes obtained by Sumar and Podemos, victims of an increasingly sad and pathetic fight.
The key: the elections in Galicia are governed by a regional adaptation of the electoral regime in force since 1977 throughout Spain. An electoral law whose main bias is a conservative correction of the vote through greater representation of the former rural provinces, today less populated and more aged.
Let's look at some relevant data. In the city of Vigo, the most populated city in Galicia (293,600 inhabitants) and the main economic center of the community, the progressive bloc garnered 60% of the votes the day before yesterday. In A Coruña, the other large city, with 244,800 inhabitants, the progressive bloc won with 50.6%. In the political capital of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, the progressive bloc also won with a similar percentage, 50.8%. In Lugo capital, the conservative bloc obtained 52%. And in Ourense capital, the conservative bloc reached a resounding 58.4%. These data are significant, but not only cities vote. In Galicia the battle is fought above all in small municipalities, therefore we must resort to provincial calculations.
The progressive bloc only wins in the province of Pontevedra, with 52%. The conservatives win by very little in the province of A Coruña (50.3%) and obtain resounding victories in Lugo (55%) and Ourense (60.2%). Since Lugo and Ourense have more representation, the vote of both provinces is what definitively tips the balance. Getting a seat in the province of Ourense costs about 10,000 votes, getting it in the province of A Coruña is around 20,000. Let's look at it with other figures: for the Popular Party, especially strong in Lugo and Ourense, each seat has cost an average of 14,947 votes throughout Galicia. To the Galician Nationalist Bloc, 16,386 votes on average, and to the PSOE, 18,125. (Source: Jaime Miquel, electoral analyst, in Infolibre).
The electoral system is the main defensive wall of the right in Galicia, but let's not pretend to be surprised because this conservative correction has been working since the first democratic elections in 1977. It is the Suárez law. It is the law designed in 1976 by Torcuato Fernández Miranda to consolidate the province (civil governors and provincial presidents) as a safety valve for the Political Reform law, approved in a referendum in November of that year. Evidently, Manuel Fraga never wanted to correct the rural bias of the Galician elections and even devised other protection mechanisms: the 5% threshold to obtain parliamentary representation and the prohibition of mayors being candidates for the regional Parliament, as Anxo explained very well. Lugilde a few days ago in La Vanguardia.
Pay attention to this information. A Galician mayor can be a deputy in Congress, in Madrid, but not in Santiago de Compostela. The mayor of Ourense, Pérez Jácome, has not been able to present himself at the head of his populist platform and has had to delegate to a lieutenant. The mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, the most voted in Spain, could not head the PSOE list in Pontevedra. It is not easy for the opposition forces to train their best political cadres, combining the local and regional levels. Ana Pontón has not been mayor but she has been in the Parliament of Galicia for twenty years. People know it and identify it perfectly with the autonomous sphere. While others moved to Madrid, she broke ground in Santiago, building the character that has just won the battle of proximity. The PSOE has been changing candidates every four years. And Sumar has resorted to a skydiving exercise (Marta Lois) that was destined to fail.
Those are the guts of the results in Galicia, but the perceptions are always simpler, more epidermal, faster. The policy must be easily explained. Today the dominant perception is that the Popular Party has won resoundingly, marginalizing a Vox in the doldrums. And that the PSOE has taken a serious hit for the benefit of the Galician Nationalist Bloc, while Sumar and Podemos sink into misery. All of this is rigorously true.
Politics is never static. Politics is dynamic. In politics, managing expectations is essential. The campaign began with the feeling that the Popular Party was going to win with complete certainty. Nobody questioned that premise. That feeling began to change due to Pontón's surprising push in the polls. The expectations of the PP were ruined with the alleged slip of Alberto Núñez Feijóo when talking about a possible pardon for Carles Puigdemont. Panic began to spread among the popular, who activated emergency mechanisms days before February 18 (payment of subsidies to shellfish farmers and immediate salary increase for health personnel) and at the last moment there was a defensive mobilization of the conservative electorate, surely facilitated by the activism of Pedro Sánchez during the last days of the campaign. Sánchez has traveled to Galicia about ten times during the electoral period.
Virtually all those citizens who voted PP in the general elections of July 23, 2023 have returned to the polls this past Sunday. Ana Pontón's personality was liked by socialist voters and she did not displease the popular ones too much, but the red star on the BNG flag continues to worry conservative Galicia. Alberto Núñez Feijóo complicated Alfonso Rueda's campaign, but Sánchez's activism in Galicia helped mobilize the popular electorate. Data: in the general elections of July 23, 712,881 people voted for the PP in Galicia and this Sunday, the popular ones received 700,491 ballots. Between both electoral events, the PSOE went from 486,832 votes to 207,691, and Sumar, from 178,691 to 28,171. The BNG's jump is brutal: 153,995 votes in July, 467,074 in February. A party that only has one deputy in Congress has just obtained a third (31.5%) of all the votes cast in Galicia. Merit goes to Ana Pontón, who has been breaking stones for twenty years, while the others came and went.
The PSOE, devoured by the nationalists. I would rather say the opposite: the ERC, BNG and Bildu trilogy have been ceasing to be independentist for some time, little by little, to attract socialist voters with the help of generational change. Last Sunday Ana Pontón was the most attractive candidate of the entire progressive bloc. 40% of the new Galician voters have voted for Pontón. With a candidate like her, the PSOE, without the red star on the Galician flag, would have dethroned the Popular Party. Why doesn't the PSOE have an Ana Pontón in each autonomy? That is the question.
We must return to what could have been the crime scene, the main scene of the campaign. The offer of a pardon to Puigdemont (pardon with conditions) made the PP stumble when he saw it published in the press. Feijóo got scared and immediately started throwing knives in Madrid. “This PP doesn't even have half a slap in the face,” wrote veteran journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos last Thursday. Zarzalejos is a man with political culture and experience. He sincerely transmitted the dominant perception in the capital of Spain in the final stretch of the Galician campaign. Since in retrospect, we are all bullfighters, I have to confess that I and other professional colleagues did not see it coming that the confusion caused by Feijóo would end up generating a defensive reaction from the popular electorate. In his eagerness to brilliantly defeat his main adversary and sow confusion in the ranks of the right, Sánchez contributed to this defensive reaction and drowned out the socialist candidate Gómez Besteiro with his protagonism, for the greater glory of the BNG. In the past...
I have been thinking about the question of the pardon for days and I reaffirm that Feijóo transmitted that message with all the intention in the world, even if he later got scared. That message contains a code addressed to Junts and the PNV that says the following: “If you strangle the legislature, I will thank you.” If the PP had lost its absolute majority or had been forced to negotiate the support of the eccentric Pérez Jácome, Madrid DF would be asking right now for the head of the man who didn't even have half a slap in the face. With Sunday's result, the Da Vinci code is being reread by Carles Puigdemont and his lawyer, Gonzalo Boye. That message is now the main key to the thick Spanish political moment. We will see it even more clearly after the Basque, European and Catalan elections. Above all, after the Catalans, if we don't have any surprises before.
Politics is not a crystal ball. Politics are background currents and chaotic contingencies.
