Andalusia: the right sets the pace
“My male friends lean to the far right, but women remain sensible”. This is what Andalusian poet Aurora Luque told the newspaper El País}, in the run-up to the Andalusian elections. Every election —and especially regional ones, where the relationship with the candidates is more direct— has its peculiarities. The current Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, came to the Junta in 2019, after 40 years of socialist hegemony. With a kind and unassertive style —far from the aggressive, fixed-agenda politics of Núñez Feijóo and his circle—, he has earned a certain respect that, in practice, translates into limited wear and tear, allowing him to attract votes beyond his usual base, both from the right (from Vox) and the left (from the PSOE itself). And this in a land that had been a socialist stronghold.
Andalusia is the PSOE’s black hole since the clientelistic system that had been established there emerged. Corruption caused the main socialist stronghold to explode. And as long as it does not rectify its position in this autonomous community, the dream of absolute majorities in Spain will continue to be impossible. No matter how much Moreno Bonilla’s reserved profile may mask it, Andalusia confirms the dominant trend in current Europe: the radicalization of the right and the blurring of the left-wing vote, with a stagnation of socialists and confusion further afield. It seems that female sensibility is still not enough. Right now, it is the right that sets the pace with the far right on horseback. No matter how difficult it is for Aurora Luque to understand (and for me too) —“The acceptance that certain discourses of exclusion and hatred of pure Nazi stock have leaves me perplexed and ashamed,” says the poet—, they are already here.
The figure of the candidates is quite decisive in elections, and, in this case, it seems evident that the PSOE has not got it right with former vice-president of the government María Jesús Montero, perhaps because socialist ambitions were limited from the start. It’s a bad sign when one enters a campaign with the fixed objective of not falling below 30 seats (twenty short of the potential winner), something that is not guaranteed at the moment. It is not easy to win if morale is so low. A consolidated president-candidate facing a contender who does not quite fit the profile to the context points to an unequal battle: visibly, Moreno Bonilla considers himself invested, and Montero’s expression of unease intensifies.
And all of this comes at a time when Pedro Sánchez has taken a step forward, boosting European social democracy in its weaker moments and attempting a certain reconstruction of the left, which has needed Trump and the war to begin to awaken. Sánchez has seen that a path was opening and has made a leap, looking more outwards —and towards himself— than inwards to the country, a decision that gives the measure of the man, but it remains to be seen if he is in a position to make it stick here. Moreno Bonilla is not Feijóo, nor is Montero Sánchez. And, for now, the right, carefully dressed by the Andalusian candidate, will remain firm in what was a socialist (or perhaps felipista) stronghold, and Sánchez will have to continue playing for all or nothing, trusting that the change of cycle will come.
It is true that Trumpist delusions complicate the scenario for the right, but it is also true that the logic of financial and digital power —despite the level of degradation to which Trump has brought America— still sets the pace, and democracy is not their priority. Everything suggests that on Sunday the PP will ask Sánchez to step down after the defeat and that Sánchez will continue on his own as if nothing had happened, awaiting a change of tide that does not seem imminent at the moment.