Lose Catalonia to win Spain. This could be the currency of the Spanish right. But... What if the alternative route also worked? In other words: if winning in Catalonia serves precisely to govern Spain...
The PSOE of Pedro Sánchez has shown once again that only a very clear victory for the left in Catalonia can prevent the right from governing in Spain. And the same thing already happened with Rodríguez Zapatero in 2008, although then with a socialist victory in the country as a whole. Nevertheless, since that year the PSOE has experienced an immense loss of votes, from which it has only partially recovered and in which, in one sense or another, Catalonia has played a determining role. It is also true, of course, that the 2008 elections were the swan song of bipartisanship, since political fragmentation began for the PSOE from 2011.
Specifically, between 2008 and 2011, the Socialists lost more than a third of the electoral harvest in all of Spain and almost half of the vote in Catalonia. And between 2011 and 2015 they once again lost one in five votes in Spain as a whole. In total, socialism's losses amounted to almost six million ballots in just two legislatures. But be careful, the new catastrophe of 2015 was accentuated by another aggravated overthrow in Catalonia, where the PSC lost more than 330,000 votes, that is to say, 36% of the votes obtained in 2011 (an electoral date in which, in moreover, socialism had already ceased to be the first Catalan force).
The socialist resurrection in the elections of April 2019 was accompanied by a spectacular recovery in Catalonia, although still insufficient to be decisive for Spain as a whole. It is true that on April 28, 2019, the PSC added 400,000 more ballots than in the 2016 elections (which meant an increase of 72% compared to the votes of that year), while the PSOE grew less 35% in the rest of Spain. However, in April 2019, Catalan socialism was still far from its Spanish counterpart in percentage of the vote: Sánchez won 29% of the ballots in Spain as a whole, but the PSC got only 23% and continued without being the most voted force in Catalonia.
However, until then, and although Pedro Sánchez had joined the Government in 2018 with the support of peripheral nationalists in the motion of no confidence in Mariano Rajoy, the socialist leader had not yet deployed the Catalan agenda of territorial and identity détente. The boldest policy of defusing the Catalan conflict was launched after the repeat elections in November 2019.
Consequently, the electoral assessment of the Catalan opening of the PSOE must be based on the results of the last four years. And in appearance, the territorial balance is catastrophic. Apart from the victory in Catalonia in the regional elections of 2021 and the local ones in May 2023, the rest has consisted of an accumulation of defeats that culminated in 28-M with the loss of a large part of local and regional power, except for Castilla-la Mancha, Asturias and Navarre. Nevertheless, the generals of 23-J seemed to correct this drift, thanks above all to the Catalan results, which this time were absolutely decisive.
The question is whether the Catalan results were "too" decisive and whether they came at the expense of a setback in the rest of Spain which, in the medium term, could drag the PSOE into an irreversible decline. The numbers are eloquent: the PSC grew in Catalonia by a quarter of a million votes (and obtained more than 34% of the ballots), but the PSOE gathered in the rest of Spain practically the same votes as the April 2019 (a more acceptable appointment in terms of participation on the 23-J than the apathetic repeat of the November election four years ago).
In short, in July the PSOE obtained 250,000 more votes in Spain as a whole than in April 2019, but this growth was limited to Catalonia; in the rest of the State, the count of socialist voters barely moved. And this means that the weight of Catalonia in the electoral harvest of the PSOE has increased to more than 15% of the total calculation of the socialist vote. However, there is nothing alarming about this circumstance: in the 2008 elections, the PSC also obtained a higher electoral share than the PSOE in Spain as a whole and Catalonia's contribution was 15% of the total votes (against 10% of the worst socialist records, in 2015 and 2016).
Also, this correlation is in line with the census weight of Catalonia in Spain, since Catalan voters make up almost 15.5% of the Spanish electorate. The data that obscures the future of the PSOE are located in some key territories, such as Andalusia (where socialism lost on the 23rd more than 100,000 votes from its April 2019 harvest). In the rest, the losses were lower: 49,000 ballots in Galicia (where the Popular Party candidate played at home), and less than 40,000 in Madrid or 21,000 in Aragon, compared to increases of almost 100,000 votes in Valencia or 45,000 in the Canary Islands.
The problem with these figures is that they are misleading in the context of the left vote as a whole. Even where the PSOE achieved substantial increases compared to the result of April 2019, the total balance of the left and center-left block remained negative due to the significant losses accumulated by the Sumar/Unides Podemos space : more than 900,000 voters between 2019 and 2023. Conclusion: territorial openness rewards the left in Catalonia, but penalizes it in the rest of Spain. The right, on the other hand, remains impassive over the 11 million voters. The future will tell.
