The PSOE beat the Popular Party in the last municipal elections, in May 2019, by more than one and a half million votes across Spain. Although he only managed to retain, among the six large capital cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, the mayorship of Seville. Before the next appointment with the local polls on May 28, in Ferraz they assume that "it is very difficult to bring down a mayor", unless he accumulates a lot of wear and tear or has made serious management mistakes. But at the headquarters of Pedro Sánchez they assure that they have all these big cities in the electoral target, in some cases with "real options" to recover the mayorships, and in others, at least, to strengthen themselves and get back on the flight.
With Barcelona, they insist, in the first place. Although they admit that the Catalan capital has always been "very tied", even in the time of Pasqual Maragall after the successful Olympic Games of 1992, Sánchez now trusts in the possibilities of Jaume Collboni to regain the first position for the PSC, as already won Salvador Illa in the regional elections of February 2021. Collboni, like the mayor of Sant Boi de Llobregat, Lluïsa Moret, will be two of the PSC candidates who will be given prominence in the municipal conference that the PSOE will hold in Valencia this week
Precisely Valencia is another of the big capitals that Sánchez wants to recover, with the candidacy of Sandra Gómez; in addition to Zaragoza, with Lola Ranera, and even Malaga, with Dani Pérez. The leadership of the PSOE also takes it for granted that Antonio Muñoz will retain the mayorship of Seville, the jewel in the socialist municipal crown. The municipal political secretary of Ferraz, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, assured yesterday that precisely the local elections in Andalusia will represent a "resounding turning point" for the recovery of the PSOE in this community, which, in addition, will begin to mark "the decline" of the regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, now with the Doñana controversy, which is added to the protests against the "dismantling" of public health.
The PSOE assure that they will also face the 28-M as a turning point to block the way to the PP, which they warn will only be able to win local power thanks to the ultra-right of Vox, and the change in the political cycle throughout Spain that it is promoting Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Vitoria and Pamplona are other capitals in the electoral crosshairs of the socialists.
Even Madrid, where ex-minister Reyes Maroto will seek to refloat the PSOE against a mayor of the PP, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who they warn is "far less".
