This year, which has just begun, almost 51% of the world's population will vote at the polls. More than seventy countries will hold elections to renew the institutions and decide the color of the executives who will govern in the coming years. Spain is no stranger to these electoral movements, which take place, after 23-J, in a climate of extreme polarization and when relations between the two main parties, the PSOE and the PP, are still strained by the law of amnesty, despite the agreement to reform article 49 of the Constitution.
The first to go to the polls will be the Galicians, on February 18. A litmus test for the populists, who want to revalidate the absolute majority and keep Vox out of the institutions, as happened in 2019. From a personal point of view, these elections are particularly important for Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who will rise to a caravan parallel to that of Alfonso Rueda to demonstrate his capacity for strength within the party and also in the community that was his fiefdom until he went to Madrid to lead the PP.
The PP will go all out in the Galician elections. It will do so to a lesser extent in the Basque Country, where it is almost taken for granted that Jeltzales and Socialists - with the permission of EH Bildu - will be able to retain Ajuria Enea. They are satisfied with maintaining and improving the results, but if there is a date marked in red on the calendar for popular and socialists, also for Junts, due to the more than assured presence of former president Carles Puigdemont on the lists, this it is June 9, the Sunday on which Europeans are called to the polls to choose the composition of the European Parliament.
Traditionally, these elections arouse little interest in the public. In 2019, participation, despite increasing eight points, was 50.7%. But on this occasion, these elections will be the first major examination at state level of Pedro Sánchez's policies after the pacts with the pro-independence parties and the approval of criminal oblivion. The popular will raise them in plebiscite mode: Feijóo-Sánchez. They claim to have polls that give them good results and trust in a tough vote to punish the socialists, while the PSOE hope that the passage of months will end to dilute the discontent over the amnesty.
The end of this year may be the Catalan elections. President Pere Aragonès has always expressed his desire to hold out until the first quarter of next year, but some voices place the call to the polls in November. The post-process elections will test the change of direction that Catalan society is experiencing and to what extent the pro-independence parties maintain their influence and will be able to understand each other, in view of a PSC that aspires to reach the Generalitat.
