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 legislature that will be full of clashes until the very last moment. His government had long since lost the majority to pass relevant projects and the Moncloa was holding out, waiting for an ideal moment to do battle with the right-wing parties, the clear favorites to govern from now on. At the PSOE, they believe that the moment has arrived with the housing crisis and that they are prepared to face the elections with guarantees. How do the parties arrive at this call to the polls?

Only the CIS is optimistic regarding the PSOE's options to revalidate 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, creating 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 has given the socialists the necessary arguments to think that now, yes, they can stand up at 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 extreme right or me," which he has been squeezing since he arrived at the Moncloa. It might not be enough for him 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 and will once again have Alberto Núñez Feijóo as his main rival. If things go like 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. Given the unpredictability of the legislative term, marked by the succession of judicial investigations surrounding the PSOE and the parliamentary stalemate, the PP leader had already convened an extraordinary state congress last July to renew the party's leadership, with the aim of ensuring 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 Party 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 had already requested them on Friday, immediately after the Congress plenary session. In Génova, they claim that the party is organically prepared for the new electoral date, and Feijóo himself proclaimed the day after the Andalusian elections on May 18, once the regional 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 only confirmed the PP's dependence on Vox, and in a context of mobilization of the left in the streets, the PP starts from favorable polls for its bloc and is eager to end the long wait that this legislative term in opposition has meant for Feijóo.

Gabriel Rufián has been flirting for months with the idea of a grand left-wing coalition in the State. An alliance in the style of those from 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 will be formed, as they say in the world of football, by Rufián and ten others.

The electoral prospects are not bad, after polls indicate that it has 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—, the forgiveness of part of the FLA debt, and the transfer of Rodalies is now in jeopardy.

"An independentist? Are we crazy?", replied Rufián himself 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 consolidated 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 involves having more room to choose candidacy colleagues.

It is Pedro Sánchez who calls the elections, but it will probably be difficult for Junts to free itself from 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 a conservative roadmap, aligned with small property owners and not with tenants. A position with which it could convince a part of the right-wing electorate in the general elections, taking into account that its 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 leadership is united in the strategy, which they consider could give them 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 amparo appeals of the leaders of October 1st who have not yet been pardoned by the Supreme Court and their return could be imminent.

The main party harmed by an early election could precisely be Pedro Sánchez's partner at the 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. In a remote meeting held this Sunday, ministers and leaders of Comuns, Sumar, Més Madrid, and IU have set October 17th as the kickoff day for the new electoral coalition, which will be named the Broad Front. "We are prepared for any scenario," maintain sources from this political space.

However, the Broad Front still has to clarify who will be the head of the list after the step aside taken by the second vice president 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 step forward, although other names have been put on the table, such as those of the Ministers of Health, Mónica García, and Culture, Ernest Urtasun, or that of the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, who has again rejected any option of taking on this challenge.

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

Vox is facing the upcoming Spanish elections with a perspective of growth, in an international context of the rise of the far-right, and with the expectation of being a key player in the governance of the State. Santiago Abascal's party has already conditioned the regional executives of the PP 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 write off a Sánchez whom they label as dangerous and unpredictable.

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 the boom in Aliança Catalana's polls. If Junts can benefit from Aliança's absence 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 pushes the PP's to the right, and which 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.