The "home first" principle disrupts the Andalusia campaign

BarcelonaThe political parties were able to hold the first day of the electoral campaign in Andalusia this May 1st, after the kickoff early this morning. And, despite the president of the Junta, the popular Juanma Moreno Bonilla, not wanting to admit it, it is Vox who sets the pace of the campaign. The Andalusian president knows he could lose the majority by just a handful of votes. And that is why his supporters are concentrating on trying to strengthen the centrist electoral base, to avoid defections, despite the headaches caused by the "national priority" that the PP itself has agreed with Vox in Extremadura and Aragon. The political victory that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has handed over to the far-right has completely disrupted an election that is the first acid test for the Galician leader after his umpteenth strategic turn with concessions to Lepenism, which popularized the slogan "Home first".

the "national priority" that the PP itself has agreed with VoxMontero, however, insisted on her commitment to "defend public services" and "equal opportunities for all citizens". The PSOE emphasizes that the national priority would break this equality. This Friday she also received the support of the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, who asked for votes because "Moreno Bonilla has ignored the right to housing", and the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, vindicated the left-wing government in the State against the "apocalypse" preached by the right. Sánchez and former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will join forces with Montero this afternoon.

PP-Vox struggle

The relationship between the PP and Vox has always been terrible in Andalusia. Moreno represents the more moderate and centrist face of the popular party, heir to a Sorayism that the hardliners criticize as soft and ideologically inconsistent, and which Vox uses to identify as "blue PSOE". But both he and the more ultraliberal wing, further from centrism, led by the Madrilenian Isabel Díaz Ayuso, have fully opposed the "national priority". No matter how many twists and turns the PP has made arguing that the application of the national priority principle will be based on "rootedness", the ideological concession has already been made and the regional agreements are based on this principle, even urging the state government to modify the law.

National priority is so much marking the Andalusian agenda that Vox has raised the war axe upon reading this phrase from the PP's electoral program: "We will promote labor, economic, and cultural integration through programs aimed at the rootedness, insertion, and social promotion of immigrants". On the contrary, the leader of Vox and candidate for the region, Manuel Gavira, has defined the slogan "Andalusians first" as key to his electoral message, that is, national priority.

Contradictions

But the far-right is also getting into dialectical knots due to its own discursive monopoly. Gavira has acknowledged an uncomfortable fact for the party in an interview with El Confidencial this Friday: that a Peruvian in a regular situation who has been rooted in Andalusia for ten years will get ahead of a Madrilenian who has just moved because "he already has the roots for national priority" – he claims to have nationality, although with the agreement in hand he doesn't need it.

These statements have given air to the PP, which this week has gone to great lengths to defend that the majority of Spaniards defend national priority by clinging to internal polls published by El Mundo. On the other hand, critical leaders of Vox such as the former vice-president of Castile and León, Juan García-Gallardo, have lamented the statements: "National priority, but not much," he said on X.

Another of the key factors will be the agrarian issue. Both Vox and the alternative left beyond the PSOE have questioned the Mercosur agreement – which comes into force this Friday – and which facilitates the arrival of South American products in Spain. The agrarian sector has expressed its opposition and the popular and socialists, who are the ones who promoted it, have vindicated it this Friday.

Amidst the great struggle between the PP, PSOE and Vox, Endavant Andalusia and Per Andalusia also emerge, two left-wing formations that are competing for an electorate: the first aspires to improve its representation and the second to avoid a slight setback predicted by the CIS.

Difficulties

The last stretch of the legislature has not been calm for the PP. Although the right wing recurrently recalls the ERO corruption scandal in Andalusia, from the Andalusian PSOE government, the mess of breast cancer screenings carried out by the PP government hit the waterline. Even Vox called for the resignation of the president and early elections. Nor can the case of alleged corruption of PP leaders from Almeria through the provincial council be overlooked.