The motion of censure in Pamplona has once again placed the information focus on Navarrese politics and, in this case, on the understanding between EH Bildu and the PSOE to remove UPN from power. The announcement of the pact that becomes effective this Thursday has been followed by all kinds of fuss and disqualifications from the right, who in the mouth of Javier Esparza went so far as to call the socialists “scum.” The movement in the Navarrese capital, however, also invites us to analyze the role of UPN, a group that has been on a true journey in the desert since it lost power in 2015.
The beginning of this fateful dynamic of the regionalists, who since the mid-90s had dominated the politics of the Old Kingdom, coincided with the arrival of Javier Esparza to the leadership of UPN in 2015, although it would be unfair to make him solely responsible for the situation. The management of his predecessor, Yolanda Barcina, weakened the formation and, above all, in that year it became evident that the paradigm that had presided over Navarrese politics was beginning to become obsolete.
The scheme of preponderance of UPN as the first force and, in parallel, acquiescence of the PSN to let them govern or do so in coalition, cracked in the 2015 elections. The socialists took a hit for their agreements with the regionalists and a good part of their votes. They ended up in the Podemos space. The Basque Uxue Barkos (Geroa Bai) was named president, also with the support of Bildu, while UPN, PP and PSN remained in the opposition.
That marked the end of a cycle, and the socialists knew how to interpret it. Four years later, in 2019, María Chivite came to power, who has managed to relocate her party to the centrality of Navarrese politics. UPN, on the contrary, seems to live in nostalgia for a time that has already passed and in which it enjoyed an already exhausted capacity to condition the socialists.
In June they achieved it, perhaps for the last time, when the PSN voted blank in the investiture of Cristina Ibarrola, promoted to the mayor of Pamplona with the votes of UPN and PP. Likewise, the mayor exhibited a hint of the times in which they set the pace for the socialists: although she needed their support to govern, she formed a government team clearly leaning to the right, with the ultra-conservative Carlos Salvador managing Igualdad.
The detail is relevant because it exemplifies UPN's difficulties in moving one iota from its postulates in order to seek complicities beyond its space. “In a scenario as plural as the Navarrese one, you are forced to understand yourself with actors from other political spaces and for that you have to act accordingly. The sum of the right is far from the majority, and the feeling that Esparza leaves is that he does not have a strategy in this situation,” indicates Ricardo Feliú, doctor in Sociology and professor at the Public University of Navarra.
In fact, apart from the attempts separately or in coalition to seek the sum of the conservative formations, when Esparza has looked at the PSOE it has been to try to condition it from Madrid and not so much to focus the discourse of his party. The results have been catastrophic. In February 2022 he negotiated with the socialist wing of the Government the support of his two deputies in Congress for the labor reform, in exchange for rapprochement in Navarra. Then, however, he did not measure his muscle well within the party and the maneuver ended in absurdity, with his two deputies in Madrid, Sergio Sayas and Carlos García Adanero, disobeying the voting discipline and, in the end, registering in the party. PP.
Now, the UPN leader trusted that the socialists would allow them to govern in Pamplona, fearful of the political and media noise that Bildu's arrival to the mayor's office could cause. Since this summer, however, there has been a communion of interests that leaves out the regionalists. Pedro Sánchez and Chivite needed the support of Bildu; while the nationalist party longed to recover the mayoralty that Joseba Asiron already held until 2019. UPN is out of the game and Esparza can definitively confirm that this strategy of trying to condition the Navarrese socialists via Madrid is history.
At this point, the question remains as to whether the regionalist leader now has room to seek rapprochement between UPN and other formations from an ideological relocation and not, as he has tried, from external pressure for which they do not have the strength. It would try to focus the formation both on the left-right axis and on the Basque-Spanish identity, perhaps looking at the precedent of the CDN (Convergence of Democrats of Navarra), a party founded by the former leader of UPN Juan Cruz Alli in 1995.
“When Esparza himself has spoken of understanding with Geroa Bai, although in reality he thinks only of the PNV, it is possible to interpret a path along those lines, but at the same time he sends confusing messages and reaches agreements with the PP. He gives the impression that there is no one at the wheel. The CDN was, furthermore, a party that sought to position itself in a Christian Democratic tradition, something that today has no weight in UPN,” adds Feliú.
The Navarrese sociologist considers that the training “will be very difficult” if it is not able to read the political scenario that has been taking shape in the last decade. Next year's congress could be the right time to draw up a strategy in this regard that allows them to get out of their labyrinth. “Otherwise, you are doomed to a position of resistance. What this belligerence in the speeches projects is internal weakness and lack of ability to interact with other formations,” concludes Feliú.
