Catalonia, present in the Andalusian campaign

MadridEaster Week has offered a theoretical break to gather strength for what is to come, the Andalusian regional elections, the most important of this cycle that began in January with those held in Extremadura. This new date at the polls is the one that interests Madrid the most, but also Barcelona, due to its implications. We are talking about a territory with a population of 8,676,713 people, of whom 6,812,861 have the right to vote. It is not just because of the demographic weight of this community that there is a lot at stake in these elections. The full cycle has been and continues to be a testing ground with the prospect of the next general elections, and today it has been settled without a definitive diagnosis. The PP continues to fuel the idea that its arrival at Moncloa is very close, even if it is with Vox as an uncomfortable and essential travel companion. To confirm this, it needs to repeat its current absolute majority in the Andalusian Parliament. Anything less than that will lead to questioning the Popular Party's chances of achieving its main objective. For the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, this match is decisive. The president of the Junta, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, therefore, has a high responsibility in this electoral call, from which his party may emerge with its chest puffed out or with the obligation to ask many questions about the causes of the slowdown in its expectations.

All of this in relation to the attention that from Madrid will be given to the Andalusian campaign and the electoral results. But from Catalonia there are reasons to closely follow what happens in this appointment. The president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, has played strongly by dispensing with the one who until now has been his first vice president, María Jesús Montero, to make her the head of the list for the Andalusian regional elections. Many people within the PSOE itself still think that their candidate will have a very difficult time, and in parallel there is also the generalized belief that this option has not been chosen to try primarily for an improbable victory at the polls, but to put trusted people in charge of a very important socialist federation. According to this thesis, Montero's main mission is to prevent a strong setback for the organization and subsequently guarantee the party's control in Andalusia for whatever may happen before the general elections. Sánchez would have preferred to strip more than one saint in the government to ensure the presence of loyal collaborators at the head of the PSOE structure in the different territories. Now it was Andalusia's turn, as happened in Aragon, for example.

Montero's election, in any case, is of particular interest to the Generalitat because among the issues that will be part of the electoral campaign, everything related to the debate on the financing of the autonomous communities stands out. It is clear that rallies are not the most conducive scenario for technical explanations, but the PP will play strongly against the role played by the vice president until now in this matter. In a deferred response to the slogan "Spain robs us," we will hear arguments to the effect that "Catalonia is trying to rob us." Certainly, it is not the usual style of the Andalusian president, but he will not lack collaborators from Madrid to cover this flank of the campaign. The day Montero said goodbye to Congress as a member of the government, the popular spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, reproached her that "she will go down in history as a woman who betrayed her country and her land in exchange for keeping a man in his post, and who has not hesitated to abandon her when he needed her."

The idea of betraying general interests to allow Pedro Sánchez to remain at the head of the country – with the addition that he does so with unnatural pacts – has everything to do with the PP's opposition to any agreement on regional financing as long as the hypothesis of establishing a unique model for Catalonia continues to be considered. Montero will have to shake off this accusation, that of having played in favor of unjustified privileges in exchange for the support of the independence parties in Congress, although it has already been seen that the initial alliances of the legislature have progressively given way to scenarios of instability and lack of majority to approve various projects, which the government has been renouncing. The decision of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to participate in the Andalusian campaign is clearly related to the attempt to lend a hand to the PSOE in general and to María Jesús Montero in particular. But the most curious thing is that a campaign has to have these derivations when the supposed pact on the aforementioned unique model remains unconfirmed.

A crucial debate

Precisely, one of the main missions of the new Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, must be to channel this debate, but without any prospect of agreement. The PP's strategy remains to seek the greatest possible desgaste of the government, with the main objective of reaching La Moncloa. So that the new first vice-president and head of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, also has a difficult time promoting negotiation in this matter. It should also be taken into account that within the socialist ranks themselves, there are no lack of dissenting voices regarding the supposed benefits of the executive's pacts with the independence parties, and with the Generalitat itself.

Illa can try to educate in the Andalusian campaign, but swimming against the tide. The principle of ordinality is not easily acceptable by other communities, although statistics show that a good part of the autonomous communities receive a much higher volume of contributions from the State than what is collected in their territory through taxes. Andalusia is one of the communities that benefit most from the current model, which in any case must be reviewed, for reasons including that it expired in 2014. It would be interesting to seriously discuss this issue in the Andalusian regional election campaign, but it has already been seen that there will not even be an agreement on debates between candidates. The PP does not want a face-to-face between Moreno Bonilla and Montero, so as not to give facilities to the aspirant. Meanwhile, the project to regulate pre-election debates remains stalled.