The Hispanic Day in Barcelona has shown that the PP and Vox have antagonistic strategies in Catalonia. The traditional demonstration of civil Spanish nationalism on Passeig de Gràcia, which gathered 1,700 people according to the Urban Guard, was marked by the electoral climate. Although the march's slogan was "Catalonia with Ceuta" and it was full of flags of the autonomous city, the calling of Spanish elections was the true protagonist. Santiago Abascal's party is aware that they are strong in the Principality, currently more so than the PP in the polls, but the Popular Party is weathering the storm of the sorpasso predicting the triumph that they take for granted in the State. The notable flight of voters or supporters of Aliança towards Vox in the Spanish elections –at least around 22%, according to the CEO– allows us to understand the multiplication of messages to seduce Sílvia Orriols' voters in the middle of October 12th. It should be noted that Aliança is not running in these elections.

High-voltage pre-campaign in Spain for the November 29th elections. In the middle of 2026, eight years after Pedro Sánchez reached the presidency of the Spanish government, the PP draws an apocalyptic scenario if it does not win hand-in-hand with Vox to push for a "decisive change," while the Spanish government promises, now for real, to solve housing problems with courage and fight against those who "pull the strings" and harm the working classes. In the Andalusian town of Dos Hermanas and in Madrid, socialists and conservatives have contrasted two apparently antagonistic models of the country using language that has long denoted aggression.

No one could say for sure now even what the turnout will be for the general elections on November 29th, but if there is half as much interest in the rest of Spain as there is inside Madrid's M-30, it will be quite high. What is being presented as the mother of all campaigns has had an unexpected start, following the reactions to the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal and her death on Wednesday. The PSOE has pinned all its hopes on the mobilization that has been set in motion following these events. The socialists are masters at handling emotional climates, but in this case, it is not even necessary. The reaction to the Maricarmen case has been quite spontaneous because there was a lot of accumulated frustration over the housing problem. It had to explode someday and it has done so now, which has given Pedro Sánchez an opportunity to try to overcome all expectations.

It didn't even take an hour for Isabel Díaz Ayuso to generate the first controversy of the electoral pre-campaign. Before Alberto Núñez Feijóo could comment on Pedro Sánchez's decision to call early elections, the Madrid president had already set the agenda by stoking the ghost of electoral fraud. "I ask that no one think of voting by mail," she insisted early Monday at an informative breakfast. Since then, this warning, launched without any proof of the supposed risk of rigging, has become one of the most commented-on topics, and has caused the PP to get tangled up trying to balance things. The leader of the Popular Party, in fact, avoided speaking publicly on the issue for two days until this Wednesday, when he joined Ayuso and her thesis.

Once again we have to agree with José María Aznar, analyst: the general elections of November 29 are not just any elections. According to Aznar they are "the most important in the last fifty years": more "important", we must understand, therefore, than the constituent general elections of June 1977, where the Cortes that drafted and approved the 1978 Constitution were chosen, the same one against which Aznar wrote some deeply furious and "liberal" articles in the newspaper La Nueva Rioja. Now, having long since become a Visigothic Pelagius of the self-styled constitutionalism, the former president of the Iraq war and the "España va bien" warns us of the hecatomb: "If the current government majority continues in power, the constitutional system and the parliamentary monarchy will end", he has warned. It must be recognized that, depending on how you look at it, it is a tempting scenario.

The People's Party is already muddying the electoral pre-campaign. And the chosen strategy, common among the right-wing, is to opt for social media. This Monday, the same day that Pedro Sánchez called early general elections for November 29th, the PP published a video on X against the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente. The tweet was a response to a post by the socialist in which he claimed that Feijóo "was already feeling the fear." The reaction of the populars was to publish a video from when the minister tore his quadriceps in 2023: "You were the one who was afraid of a sprain," they wrote.

Only twenty-four hours after the announcement of early elections, the PP has activated the judicial route against the PSOE. The Popular Party members have registered a filing with the National Court in which they demand the indictment of the socialists for the crimes of illegal financing, bribery, influence peddling, money laundering, and embezzlement. They have presented it as a popular accusation in the case being investigated by magistrate Santiago Pedraz regarding the alleged shady dealings of the PSOE, the so-called Leire Díez case. With this move, the Popular Party members are launching another branch of their artillery against the socialists on the eve of the election campaign.

The publication of the calling of early elections to the Official State Gazette (BOE) kicked off the pre-campaign this Tuesday. Pedro Sánchez seeks to drag the progressive vote mobilized by the housing crisis and turn around the result predicted by the polls, which give a majority to the right and the far right. Everything will depend, however, on the correlation of forces resulting from the polls on November 29, and much of the attention in the campaign will be on Junts, which already tipped the balance in this last Spanish legislature. A position of calculated balance and equidistance is expected from the Junts members in the campaign, but the spokesperson in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras, has already assured that they will not facilitate a PP and Vox government.

When Pedro Sánchez called general elections in 2023, just after the Socialists' heavy defeat in the regional and municipal elections, Alberto Núñez Feijóo already saw himself as the winner. The pools of potential ministers were repeated throughout the campaign, and the speculations were primarily about whether the PP would reach 160 deputies and how far it would be willing to concede to Vox. No one, or very few, predicted that Pedro Sánchez would hold on to Moncloa. For this reason, the results of that July 23rd spread a sense of disappointment within the party towards the person who was supposed to save them from 'Sanchismo'. But they gave him a vote of confidence, taking into account that he had been at the head of the PP for little more than a year. That was the argument: Feijóo still lacked experience. Almost a year has passed and the popular leader now finds himself at the match point of his political career.

Joy on the right over Pedro Sánchez's decision to call early elections. Both the PP and Vox have applauded the announcement for November 29, which they see as the definitive opportunity to end the Sanchista era. "Finally, we can close this chapter," celebrated Alberto Núñez Feijóo in an institutional statement at the Popular Party headquarters shortly after the Spanish Prime Minister's announcement. The PP leader has been waiting for years for a second chance to reach La Moncloa after his failed attempt in 2023, and has positioned these new polls as a transcendental occasion in which much more will be done "than choosing between two parties." "This is about making Spain defeat Sánchez and what he represents," proclaimed Feijóo, who urged citizens to decide "if they want four more years of what we are living through or if they want to give change a chance." However, the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has gone a step further and has once again fueled the ghost of electoral fraud.

A trend is sweeping across Europe. Traditional right-wing parties are collapsing while the far-right continues to rise. The latest country in which this phenomenon has become evident, which is already an indisputable reality in France or Italy, is Germany. The elections last weekend in the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, and those at the beginning of September in Saxony-Anhalt, have been a cold shower for the CDU. The German conservatives, who with their Bavarian allies, the CSU, are the largest national group of the European People's Party in the European Parliament, have succumbed in two of them to the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), considered one of the most radical on the continent.

The pepper spray that PP deputy Ana Belén Vázquez (Bande, 1975) showed on Wednesday in Congress to show solidarity with Ceuta triggered chaos. It happened after the President of Congress, Francina Armengol, expelled her from the chamber and a party employee emptied the spray in the restroom. In total, a dozen people received medical attention, three floors of the lower house were closed, and one worker went on sick leave. But who is Vázquez?

José María Aznar is clear that the coming months will be turbulent and that the road to the next Spanish elections will be "turbulent". Hence, the former Spanish Prime Minister has issued a warning to Alberto Núñez Feijóo to prevent a repeat of 2023, where he was left at the gates of Moncloa. "A cool head and a firm hand are needed," Aznar stated this Friday at the closing of the FAES Campus, where he was accompanied by the current leader of the PP, who picked up the gauntlet after his predecessor expressed his conviction that Feijóo "is one of the few public men" who can act with the necessary "calm". "That Aznar says he trusts me is not a compliment, it is a challenge," the Galician politician replied.

In recent days, a new torpedo has emerged that the PP is using to fire against Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish government. Last week, Beatriz Biedma, the judge from Badajoz who investigated and sent the brother of the PSOE leader to the dock, asked to appear as a private prosecutor at the National Court in the case regarding Leire Díez. The reason? The alleged maneuvers to remove her from the investigation of the David Sánchez case. Since then, news has been appearing in a cascade speaking of an alleged relationship between the Los Rochos drug trafficking clan and those christened politically and media-wise as the sewers of the PSOE. And the PP has clung to it during the control session in Congress to pounce on the Moncloa.

Spain, the lack of self-esteem and Spanish nationalist fervor marked this Tuesday's colloquium at the Círculo Ecuestre, where languages were the protagonists. "Ayusism" fully permeated the Barcelona club in front of about sixty attendees, and served to comment on the existential obsessions typical of a nation-state that is not France and refuses to be Switzerland. It did so with a key person from the Madrid president's inner circle, the deputy spokesperson for the PP in the regional Parliament, Rafa Núñez, who created the Vox brand but was signed in 2022 by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. He was accompanied by the leader of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, and the party's brain and senator Juan Milián.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo is 65 years old and, if he obtains a majority after the next Spanish elections, he could become the oldest president of the government to arrive at Moncloa. In parallel, the leadership headed by the Galician leader is promoting a kind of renewal plan for the party's territorial organic structures to rejuvenate them, dispensing with senior leaders due to their age, which curiously oscillates between 60 and 70 years old. In particular, this is happening in the provincial leaderships of Catalonia following the calling of the respective congresses. For the moment, it is not causing any war or major tensions, but it does generate uncertainty, especially due to the state leadership's fixation on the age they want the officials to have. And, in this sense, the anxiety among the party cadres is knowing who will occupy the position of secretary general when there is less than a year left until the municipal elections, that is to say, who will be promoted and "how the families will be repositioned".

The leaders of the two main Spanish parties are in Catalan lands this Sunday. While the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, is at the PSC's Festa de la Rosa in Gavà, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has visited the largest mayoralty they have in Catalonia, Badalona. As if he were in the middle of a campaign, aware of Catalonia's electoral weight, the leader of the Popular Party has called for gathering the support of a majority of Spaniards so that Catalonia can “unleash its strength again” and be a key territory in the “reconstruction of Spain”. “Catalonia is pushing for change,” predicted Feijóo during his speech this Sunday at the Festa de las Migas in Badalona, where all 6,000 tickets were sold out. From the third-largest city in Catalonia, he has defended the management of the mayor, Xavier García Albiol, and promised that, if he leads the Spanish government, Spain “will recover the protection of its borders and will recover the prestige of its passport”.

"The image of the Community of Madrid government is Formula 1 this past weekend." With these words, Isabel Díaz Ayuso made clear how important the Grand Prix of motoring, dubbed Madring, is for her political project. The Madrid president has fully committed to the event and has turned it into a showcase for her management model, ignoring the criticisms it has generated among residents, the opposition, and even pilots who participated in the urban circuit. The leader of the Madrid PP has defended it by contrasting a supposed defeatism of the left, which would want a diminished capital, with the spectacular nature and "resounding success" of Madrid, which hosts major events and demonstrates to the world an "extraordinary organizational capacity." The F1 arrives at a delicate moment for Ayuso: the luxury penthouse scandal is not fading, and this very Friday she admitted that she went to see the property without the intention of living in it, and the judge has already taken a step to investigate the matter.

"Giving away Spanish passports? [...] That is over" and "The passport must be earned". The phrases were spoken this July by Alberto Núñez Feijóo during his assessment of the year as leader of the opposition. Amid the controversy over the amnesty lawof the Spanish government, and immersed in a competition with Vox over the toughness of the rhetoric on immigration, the president of the PP was already proposing a tightening of the conditions for accessing Spanish nationality. Just two months later, and in the midst of a crisis in Ceuta, the Popular Party goes a step further: they are now proposing to withdraw nationality from Spaniards of foreign origin who commit serious crimes.

The week ends with the hangover from yesterday's debate in Congress. Just 24 hours later, what we anticipated yesterday on the fly is already being confirmed: Sánchez's explanations arrived late, remain overshadowed by the reality of the thousands of people who are still wandering through Ceuta and, therefore, the Spanish president is doomed. Neither the opposition nor the investiture partners believe that Morocco had nothing to do with it (it is impossible for the illegal displacement of seventy thousand people to go unnoticed by a regime like Morocco) and therefore Sánchez moves between the figure of someone who, for the sake of state, does not want to antagonize a neighbor with the capacity to complicate your life and that of a president who is a victim of blackmail by Morocco. The fact that Sánchez is sentenced is a metaphor, but for the PP and Vox it is a wish. Feijóo said yesterday that “Sánchez will pay for his management, at the polls and in the courts”. And the fact is that Vox has long been reminding that Sánchez can be tried for treason, a procedure that is regulated in article 102 of the Constitution and which would be handled by the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court and which consists of an initiative by a quarter of the members of the Congress of Deputies and requires the approval of half plus one of the deputies (this would be 176), and the PP and Vox alone do not reach it, they are 169.Beyond when and how the legislative term ends, the case has other equally serious dimensions. For example, the power of Morocco, an ally of the United States, with a good relationship with Israel, and which receives money from the EU to regulate migratory flows. This gives it great bargaining power. As our head of International, Francesc Millan, explains today, in this column in which he draws the contrast between how the EU stands together when Russia attacks, but when the problem has been at its southern border, the problem was Spanish, not European. Mind you, while we talk about geopolitics, yesterday more than 80 people appeared dead on a migrant boat that arrived in the Canary Islands. The boat had left Gambia 26 days ago. After decades of apparently predictable life, we have entered the era of life under threat, a hybrid, indirect, disruptive threat that prevents making plans and living under the impression (more or less based on real events) that life depends on us and not on external, geopolitical factors.Speaking of violent disruptions, yesterday the film Cronos, about the attacks on La Rambla and Cambrils in July 2017.I had the opportunity to watch it and I recommend it to you. You start watching it with a knot in your stomach and you finish it the same way.The pace set by the director is very high and sustained, the script is clear, the acting is competent, and the production is well-resourced. The story is told, above all, from within the Mossos, from Trapero to the commanders who led the capture of the terrorists, which lasted four days, passing through the Mossos' communication director, Patrícia Plaja, and her impeccable crisis communication during those days. The political dispute between the Spanish government and the Generalitat over the management and information regarding the attack is noted, as well as the regrettable leak of The Mossos-The note to make the Mossos and the Generalitat look bad. What is not provided as context is that there was only a month and a half left until October 1st. And the state of shock in Ripoll is also well noted. Not so much the story of boys who were apparently integrated but were ripe for radicalization. But since we are talking about a two-hour film and not a six-part series, many narrative threads come to mind that remain to be unfolded.