"Good vibes". Pedro Sánchez himself warned his team that they detected a change of ground, a different atmosphere. It was at the rally he led in Valencia, with 2,200 supporters, on the last Saturday of the campaign, July 15, where he appealed to his history of resistance to encourage him to win "against all odds". The PSOE's internal follow-up studies reflected, from that day on, "a very important upswing".
The first week of the campaign was heavily burdened by the fiasco of the only face-to-face between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Atresmedia, held on July 10, which frustrated all the expectations of the Socialists. "Moral decay", they acknowledged. But little by little, the own successes in the electoral strategy, and the accumulation of mistakes of the political opponent, according to them, began to change the ground.
The growth of the PSOE was constant, but insufficient. And the notable rise in expectations, the famous "comeback" that Sánchez had been calling for until then without success, was forged from that Saturday. They point out to Ferraz that it was then that he began to "root" the discourse that things, in this legislature, "have been done well", despite the recognized and corrected errors, such as the unwanted effects of the law of only yes is yes . The fear of the formation of a PP and Vox government also began to subside, and caused "a reaction", especially in territories such as Extremadura, where the alliance of the right with the ultra-right was already "palpable", not a simple hypothesis.
The next day, Sunday 16 July, Sánchez led a rally in Barcelona, with 3,000 supporters. Catalonia was also decisive in 23-J. It had been some time, they acknowledge Ferraz, that Salvador Illa's PSC demonstrated its electoral strength. But they say that it was "devastating" Santiago Abascal's acknowledgment that if Vox came to government, tension would return to Catalonia. "He ratified what we have been saying for so long", say the socialists. Thus, "not so much the fear of the far-right, but the fear of losing the policy that this government has made in Catalonia" was activated. "The polls have meant a clear ratification of Sánchez's dialogue and coexistence agenda, in Catalonia and throughout Spain," they point out. "There was not a vote of punishment for his policy in Catalonia, but the opposite", they emphasize. Pardons or penal reform, point out other leaders, were "depreciated" on 23-J.
Sánchez assures that he began to perceive a mobilization of the progressive electorate as he had not seen for years. Among the successes of the campaign, Ferraz also highlighted the communication strategy, with the segmentation of the electorate. For example, among young people. And they highlight, as concrete successes, having turned what was an "insult" of the right - "Perro Sanxe" - to transform it into a "reason for pride". "We realized that for the young people it was not a pejorative expression, but something positive that we took advantage of," they acknowledge.
The communication strategy, they pointed out to Ferraz, wanted to "make Sánchez visible" to a much wider, or even refractory, audience than those who traditionally gather at a rally to applaud him. From the television program El Hormiguero, to the podcast La Pija y la Quinqui. The "effectiveness" of this strategy, they say, has been demonstrated.
Along with its own successes, the PSOE's mistakes stand out. "The last week, and part of the previous one, was disastrous for the PP", they say. The slogan "Que te vote Txapote", not censured by Feijóo, was turned against them with the rejection of victims of terrorism. The leader of the PP admitted, on the old photo of the yacht, that then Marcial Dorado was not a drug trafficker, only a smuggler. And not attending the last debate on RTVE, already on July 19, was an "absolute tactical error", they indicate.
The demographic expectation, they warn, ended up being very counterproductive for the PP. "They let themselves be hard, with a certain pride, they already took it for granted. But our follow-up studies never gave the PP 160 or 150 seats, not by a long shot," they point out. "They never gained an absolute majority with Vox, not even in their dreams", they say.
"We ran the best campaign", concluded Sánchez himself on July 21, at the rally with which he closed Getafe, with 4,500 enthusiastic supporters. "We fell and we got up, and we pedaled against the clock and crossed all the flying goals and climbed all the unimaginable gates and we have a few meters left to reach the final sprint", encouraged the leader of the PSOE.
In this end-of-campaign rally, in which his voice already showed signs of exhaustion, Sánchez, nevertheless, failed in two of his electoral predictions: neither the PSOE was the first political force on 23-J, nor Add the third. The surprise revealed by the polls on Sunday, unthinkable even for a large part of the socialist leadership at the time, is that he may indeed be able to fulfill his third wish: "There will be four more years of progressive government in Spain".
