"The right wins the Mediterranean". This was the main headline in La Vanguardia's Politics section last May 29, heading the information on the municipal and regional elections. It might seem like an incomplete and partial headline, but it pointed to a substantive fact: the reconquest of Eastern Spain, which José María Aznar has always considered a key factor for the consolidation of a solid right-wing political hegemony.
maps After the absolute majority in Andalusia and guaranteed Murcia, despite the disaster in the Mar Menor, the victory of the PP in the Valencian Community, in the Balearic Islands and in Aragon paints the whole of Spain bathed in or influenced by the Mediterranean blue, with the only and constant exception of Catalonia.
The conquest of the Mediterranean and its hinterland is the great qualitative leap of the Spanish right on May 28. The PP currently has the largest base of territorial power it has ever had, since neither Aznar nor Mariano Rajoy gained control of Andalusia in their respective periods of government. Rajoy was ready in March 2012, but Javier Arenas intervened at the last moment. As we have been emphasizing for weeks, the Valencian Community is today the political epicenter of Spain.
In Murcia, the PP lacks two deputies to achieve an absolute majority. He needs Vox, but the negotiating position of the popular people is not fragile. In the Balearic Islands, the PP has one more deputy than the entire left (26 to 25). He has a certain margin over Vox, therefore. They have been given the presidency of the Balearic Parliament, a position that has fallen to the deputy Gabriel Le Senne, a name that could appear in a random novel by Patrick Modiano, but which actually corresponds to an archetypal character of old Spanish reactionism. "Women are more belligerent because they don't have a penis," this gentleman wrote on social networks. While waiting to see how the new Balearic government is formed, Vox has negotiated a programmatic framework that could cause serious tensions in the linguistic field.
In Aragon, the populists could count on the support of the only deputy of the Regionalist Aragonese Party, reducing the pressure capacity of Vox. To be able to govern the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón has to go, whether he wants to or not, through the box office of the extreme right. It is in the Valencian Community where Vox has the most pressure, and the whole of Spain is already aware of it. The PP has won the Mediterranean, but it has to pay a political price, giving Vox a strong role in Valencia and the Balearic Islands, communities in which the Valencian and Balearic variants of the Catalan language are spoken. The feminist issue will not be the only area of friction.
Last week, the Valencia pact slipped out of their hands. They swayed it on Saturday by voting for the socialist Jaume Collboni as mayor of Barcelona and now Vox is threatening to repeat elections in Extremadura if it does not facilitate the enthronement of María Guardiola, who came second behind the PSOE, by a narrow margin. The PP concedes to the extreme right in the Mediterranean and tries to compensate in Extremadura with a vivacious candidate who attracts the attention of the press: a right-wing lady who speaks as if she were left-wing. María Guardiola's speech highlights the hypocrisy of Carlos Mazón and Marga Prohens.
Are we dealing with a subtle Machiavellian game of Calle Génova or a sum of improvisations? half and half
