Who is ready for Sánchez's elections?

Barcelona / MadridEveryone to the polls. Pedro Sánchez has put an end to the rumors by announcing the end of a legislative term that will be high-stakes until the very last moment. His government had long since lost the majority to approve relevant projects, and the Moncloa was holding out, waiting for the ideal moment to challenge the right-wing parties, the clear favorites to govern from now on. In the PSOE, they believe the moment has arrived with the housing crisis and that they are prepared to face the elections with guarantees. How are the parties arriving at this call to the polls?

Only the CIS is optimistic regarding the PSOE's chances of revalidating the presidency of the Spanish government. But the socialists are the only ones who have been able to play with the calendar. The plan was to wait at least until the debate on the general state budget, which would have been filled with social measures as a declaration of intent. Presumably, the PP, Vox, and Junts would have shot them down, which would have generated the necessary excuse to bring forward the elections. But what was not in the Moncloa's calculations is that a better scenario would be generated spontaneously. The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal and the subsequent outbreak of protests for the right to housing have given the socialists the necessary arguments to think that now they can indeed stand up to the polls. It is the best moment of the party's worst moment.

Corruption, the migration crisis in Ceuta, and parliamentary weakness were burdens that condemned the PSOE to mere electoral survival. With housing at the epicenter, Sánchez will try to mobilize the electorate in a variant of the already traditional "either the far-right or me," which he has been squeezing since he arrived at the Moncloa. Perhaps it will not be enough to reach the majority necessary to govern, but the socialist gurus consider that it could leave the party well prepared to lead the opposition.

Sánchez will obviously be the candidate (Jordi Hereu will be the PSC's), and will once again have Alberto Núñez Feijóo as his main rival. If things go as they did in 2023, the skill of one and the limitations of the other could once again balance the scales.

For more than a year, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been preparing for a snap election. Faced with the unpredictability of the legislature, marked by the succession of judicial investigations surrounding the PSOE and the parliamentary stalemate, the PP leader had already convened an extraordinary national congress last July to renew the party's leadership with the aim that Pedro Sánchez would not catch them off guard if he were to make a sudden move.

Throughout the weekend, the message from the popular leaders has been to demand that Sánchez stop stalling and call them once and for all. "Come on, democrat, dare to call elections," challenged deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo this Sunday. Feijóo already requested them on Friday, immediately after the plenary session of Congress. In Génova, they assure that the party is organically prepared for the new electoral appointment and Feijóo himself proclaimed the day after the Andalusian elections on May 18th, once the autonomous electoral cycle had closed, that they were already kicking off the campaign to reach the Moncloa.

Although with the burden that the results in Extremadura, Aragon, Castile and León, and Andalusia have done nothing but confirm the PP's dependence on Vox and with a context of left-wing mobilization in the streets, the PP starts from favorable polls for its bloc and is eager to end the long wait that this legislature in the opposition has meant for Feijóo.

Gabriel Rufián has been flirting for months with the idea of a great left-wing coalition in the State. An alliance in the style of those of the Second Republic, where ERC, with him at the helm, would lead the Catalan branch. But neither the leadership of Esquerra has bought into this adventure, nor have the rest of the potential partners. However, despite the discrepancies and the unrest it has generated internally within the party, the ERC candidacy was planned to be formed, as they say in the world of football, by Rufián and ten others.

Sources close to the Republican spokesperson do not, however, close the door on a broad coalition to combat the far right. Rufián has begun a period of reflection in the purest Sánchez style to decide what he will do on November 29th.

"An independentist? We are crazy", replied the same Rufián this week when asked if he saw himself leading a state-wide left-wing candidacy. Consolidated in the polls as the best-rated politician in Catalonia and, after Pedro Sánchez, the most highly rated in the State by the left-wing electorate, Rufián has solidified his role as a free spirit in the party. However, Oriol Junqueras already knows that he has a list of conditions to meet to have him as head of the list, and the first one implies having more leeway to choose candidacy partners.

ERC's electoral prospects on its own are not bad. Polls suggest that it has already overcome the downward electoral cycle. However, the Republicans were hoping to get more out of the agreements with the Spanish government. Now the new regional financing model is falling through –which did not seem likely to be approved in Congress anyway– as well as the forgiveness of part of the FLA debt, and the transfer of the Rodalies rail service is left in doubt.

It is Pedro Sánchez who is calling the elections, but it will probably be difficult for Junts to shake off the accusation of having provoked them. Or, at least, of having given the Spanish president the excuse to call them. The Junts members decided to take a stand in the negotiation of the two housing decrees to consolidate their conservative roadmap, aligned with small property owners and not with tenants. A position with which they could convince a portion of the right-wing electorate in the general elections, bearing in mind that their main electoral headache, Aliança Catalana, will not compete in the Spanish ones.

The polls are harsh on Junts, both when asked about the Catalan elections and the general ones. Some even point out that the Junts members could lose half of their 7 deputies in the lower house. But the party's leadership is united in the strategy, which they believe could yield returns in the short term. Be that as it may, Junts would have preferred to avoid the elections.

If there are no surprises, Miriam Nogueras will be the head of the list. She is a figure who has been gaining internal influence and whose clarity in her message is valued. However, the immediate future of the party will depend on an unpredictable factor: will there be a Puigdemont effect? This very week the Constitutional Court will validate the appeals for amparo of the October 1st leaders who have not yet been amnestied by the Supreme Court, and his return could be imminent.

The main party harmed by a snap election could precisely be Pedro Sánchez's partner at La Moncloa. The space to the left of the PSOE is in the midst of reconfiguration, with many unknowns still to be answered and polls predicting a significant electoral decline for them. In a virtual meeting held this Sunday, the ministers and leaders of Comuns, Sumar, Més Madrid, and IU have set October 17th as the kick-off day for the new electoral coalition, which will be named Front Ampli. "We are prepared for any scenario," say sources from this political space.

However, the Front Ampli still has to clarify who will be the head of the list after the step aside taken by the second deputy prime minister of the Spanish government, Yolanda Díaz, and whether it will manage to bring together other groups. This Monday they will hold a broader meeting with other parties that are part of the parliamentary group in Congress. The former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, is one of those who have shown willingness to take a step forward, although other names have been put on the table, such as that of the Minister of Health, Mónica García, who opened the door this Monday to leading the candidacy, that of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, or that of the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, who has once again rejected any option of taking on this challenge.

And what about Podemos? The purple party, which is also not favored by recent polls and regional results, has already announced that it will be Irene Montero who will lead its candidacy. For the moment, alone, although they would have preferred to push the elections further away in time so that the government could continue legislating on housing. Precisely the climate of citizen indignation generated following the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal could shake up the expectations of the Front Ampli and Podemos, which until now had some of the most demobilized electorates.

Vox is facing the upcoming Spanish elections with a growth perspective, in an international context of the rise of the far-right, and with the expectation of being a key piece in the state's governability. Santiago Abascal's party has already conditioned the PP's regional executives and aspires to do the same with Feijóo, although Vox's messages in recent months have been a call for caution so as not to consider Sánchez, whom they label as dangerous and unpredictable, finished.

The leader of the Spanish far-right already kicked off the electoral pre-campaign with Catalonia as a starting point and the prospect of growing significantly there, amidst a boom in the polls for Aliança Catalana. If Junts can benefit from the absence of Aliança in the general elections, this is also the situation for Vox in the Principality.

In recent weeks, the party has taken advantage of the migration crisis in Ceuta to impose its anti-immigration framework, a situation that benefits them in terms of deploying their electoral discourse, which shifts the PP's discourse to the right, and is based on stoking fear of what they consider an "invasion," which they also blame for the housing crisis. The slogan "national priority" serves them for everything.

The Abertzale left already surpassed the PNV in seats three years ago –thanks to what it achieved in Navarre– and now Bildu aspires to also be the most voted force in the Basque Country. Housing is a key issue for Bildu and could benefit them in the campaign, but the PNV already acted pragmatically in last Friday's decree vote, supporting the first one and opposing the one that established automatic lease renewals and compensation to tenants by landlords in case they wanted to terminate the contract. Both have played this term as key partners of the Spanish government. "Madrid has its battles, but the Basque Country must defend its interests," the president of the Jeltzales, Aitor Esteban, explained this Monday. The question now is what the PNV will do in case the right-wing parties do not reach a majority. Will it ally itself with Pedro Sánchez again while Vox is in the equation?

Regarding Galicia, the BNG starts from one deputy, but the party's electoral cycle is also positive and it aspires to continue being decisive in Madrid if the left-wing parties pull off a surprise that, on paper, seems unlikely.