One of the conclusions from the elections in Andalusia, besides the bittersweet triumph of the PP and the collapse of the PSOE, is the strengthening of Endavant Andalusia, a sovereignist and Andalusianist party that has always wanted to distance itself from the "classic and traditional" left-wing parties that are in the Spanish government. Now it is also distancing itself from Gabriel Rufián's positions, who maintains the commitment to weave a common front for the upcoming general elections. The electoral success, which the polls failed to detect, has been undeniable: they have doubled their votes, quadrupled their seats, and were the third force in Cadiz and Seville, ahead of Vox. So much so that the PP considers Endavant Andalusia responsible for the impossibility of renewing the absolute majority.

The PSOE's defeat in Andalusia is profound. One only needs to look at the evolution of the electoral results from the 1982 regional elections to the present day to realize the magnitude of the disaster. Because it's not just a loss of votes for the party, but there is a clear rightward shift in this community. An underlying current that has been gaining traction since 2018, the first year since the restoration of democracy that the PP came to power hand in hand with Vox and Ciudadanos. The candidate herself, María Jesús Montero, has been self-critical —honesty is always welcome—, as she is aware that she has fallen far short of her objective and that if the left-wing bloc has revived minimally, it has been due to the result of the sovereignist left of Endavant Andalusia.

The Andalusian elections confirm that the Spanish right is heading towards living within what Moreno Bonilla and Feijóo had insisted throughout the campaign they wanted to avoid: the mess (in the original version, el lío, a terminology inherited from Rajoy). The mess is having to govern with Vox, and that is exactly what the Andalusian PP will have to do in this new legislature, now that they have lost their absolute majority. In regional negotiations with the People's Party, Vox acts as a party that does not know the meaning of expressions like institutional loyalty or proportionality . Apparently, they don't even understand what negotiating exactly means: for Vox, there is only the possibility of imposing their slogans and ideological obsessions, or breaking the game. They are not government partners: they tutelage governments. Lately, Vox's slogan is called national priority, which means institutionalizing racism, supremacism, and xenophobia, and making them transversal elements in government action. After that, there follows a list of hatreds (feminism, environmentalism, etc.) at the top of which is the Catalan language and anything that Spanish far-right nationalism identifies as "catalan". This is "the mess" that Moreno Bonilla will have to face, who does not emerge exactly unscathed (5 fewer seats and loss of the absolute majority) from the scandal of breast cancer screenings, despite the fact that there were more than enough reasons for the wear and tear to be more pronounced.For its part, the question that the Andalusian PSOE can ask itself is whether it has already hit rock bottom and if it still has sheets to lose in future electoral washes. In hindsight, it is easy to say, but the truth is that the socialists could hardly have chosen a worse candidate than María Jesús Montero, a woman who is Andalusian by birth but who is little or nothing so in practice, much more linked to Madrid, to Pedro Sánchez and to the party apparatus than to Andalusian political discussion, which is intense, dense, and vibrant. The old tactic of sending politicians who have "succeeded" in Madrid as ministers to the "provinces" (Pilar Alegría to Aragon, María Jesús Montero to Andalusia), which has been used so many times by both the PP and the PSOE, interchangeably, is not yielding results for Pedro Sánchez.The significant rise of the sovereignist left Endavant Andalusia, led by José Ignacio García, compared to the blockage suffered by the Sumar, Podem, and Esquerra Unida coalition, Per Andalusia, with Antonio Maíllo as candidate, confirms that "what matters to people" is also ideological, and that sovereignism makes sense (and has voters) when it is presented as a form of democratic improvement, linked to the demands for the rights and freedoms of individuals, both individually and collectively. The fact that Endavant Andalusia has received more votes than Vox in constituencies like Cádiz or Seville is also relevant. By blocs, the right-wing parties total 68 seats, compared to 41 for the left-wing parties. The mess that we already know in the Balearic Islands or in the Valencian Country is beginning in Andalusia.

Juanma Moreno recalls having been "obsessed" with being president of Andalusia since October 22, 1995. That day, at 25 years old, he was elected president of Noves Generacions del PP of Andalusia. What at that time seemed the impossible dream of a young promise of the right became a reality on January 18, 2019, when he took office and became the first head of the Andalusian executive not to be a socialist in history. He did so despite having obtained the worst results for the PP in decades —he was the second force with 26 deputies and 20.75% of the votes— thanks to a pact with Cs and Vox. Almost seven and a half years later, Moreno has managed to turn this fluke with which he ousted the PSOE into hegemonic leadership. As he himself explains in his book Manual de convivencia (Espasa, 2025), "perseverance" is one of the qualities that represent him.

He is riding a bicycle. She is looking at her phone. The child must be 3 or 4 years old. "She can't be the mother, can she?" I think. I ask Nati, who is walking beside me. She smiles. She wouldn't be surprised, even though that girl – she looks like a girl – could be 15 at most. In this area, the street names are litanies, that is, religious supplications: refuge of sinners, comforter of the afflicted, help of Christians. On these walls, divine proclamations take on another dimension. Nati explains to me that one of the concerns she had during the years she was a school principal was precisely that the girls would not stop studying, especially when they were asked for their hand in marriage. And this could happen very soon. At 11, at 12, at 13. "How did you do it?" I ask. "By trying to work with the families," she says. After a while, they call me: "Did you see what Nati said?" I approach. "Oh, yes, I forgot something," she says. And she blurts out, with a tone of normality: "They also put cribs in the classrooms." "What?" I say. "Yes, cribs, so they wouldn't leave.

Sometimes victory tastes like defeat. This is the case for Juanma Moreno Bonilla's PP in Andalusia. From a historical perspective, the result of these elections does nothing more than consolidate conservative hegemony in a territory that had been a stronghold of socialist votes. But politically, for Moreno Bonilla and his Andalusian and moderate path, having to make a deal with Vox is a tragedy because it affects the core of his political discourse. We will have to see how he manages it after having said that the dilemma of these elections was "either an absolute majority or chaos".

Night of infarction in Andalusia, bittersweet outcome for the PP and a blow for the PSOE. Juanma Moreno Bonilla and Alberto Núñez Feijóo were very happy seeing that the polls predicted that the popular party could repeat the absolute majority they achieved four years ago, but the ballot boxes have issued another verdict: the PP has lost five deputies compared to 2022, has fallen two seats short of an absolute majority, and will once again need Vox's approval to govern. Seven months ago, the PP inaugurated the regional electoral cycle that now comes to an end with the unwavering goal of freeing itself from Vox, but it has ended up being even more of a hostage to the far-right. To the point that even the most moderate "baron" of the popular party – who had a free hand – now finds himself forced to negotiate with Santiago Abascal if he does not want to repeat the elections. In parallel, on Ferraz street it has been an even more painful night: the PSOE has achieved its worst result in history and is nineteen percentage points behind the popular party. The only relief that gives some oxygen to the socialists is that the future negotiation between the PP and Vox will once again highlight the discomforts and contradictions of the popular party.

One of the firecrackers hit him in the leg. He shows it by lifting his trousers. Pere Tordera, the photographer, also grabs a handful of hair: "Look, it's burned." But far from worrying, there, everyone laughs. We are at calle Pelay Correa number 25 in Seville, the headquarters of the Peña Bética Triana. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. Betis has just beaten Elche, returns to the Champions League 21 years later and the streets are filled with the smell of gunpowder. "Come on, we'll buy you a beer," say Charo and Rosa. Football doesn't matter to them, they were just looking for a place to eat snails. 

A man from Cordoba, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, president of the Spanish Republic (1931-36), is the author of one of the phrases that have best defined the dual nature of Catalanism. Don Niceto told Francesc Cambó, in the Cortes, that “you cannot be at the same time the Bolívar of Catalonia and the Bismarck of Spain”. A phrase that could also have been applied to Lluís Companys, Miquel Roca or Gabriel Rufián. Being a Catalanist in Madrid implies a contradiction difficult to manage. On the other hand, Andalusianism is an equally intense sentiment but one that combines with Spanishness as well as chamomile and soda water at the Feria de Abril. Because Andalusia (which according to its Statute of Autonomy is a nationality) has an irrefutable, even exuberant, identity, but it is Castilian in origin, and has contributed as much as Castile to the definition of what is Spanish.

Andalusia is celebrating its thirteenth regional elections this Sunday, a series that began in 1982 and in which a solid socialist hegemony was maintained until Juanma Moreno Bonilla acceded to the Junta in 2018 hand in hand with Ciudadanos and Vox. In this last decade, Moreno Bonilla has built his own profile, different from the state PP, and especially different from the Madrid PP, based on moderation, good manners, and undisguised Andalusianism. In reality, it is a formula that recalls Pujol's Convergència, albeit without questioning the Spanish national project, and which is also practiced, for example, by the Galician PP and, to a lesser extent, the Balearic PP.

This Sunday, elections are being held in Andalusia that could be key to the political future of the State. To get closer to the reality of this territory, we have sent Toni Soler there.

The day has arrived. This Sunday Andalusia votes in elections that are regional and that many will perceive as a genuine primary. But in a certain sense, it is also a final, an event in which morale and the possibilities with which the PP will have to face the rest of the legislature for the whole of Spain are at stake. If the current Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, manages to regain his absolute majority, the bells will ring loud at Calle Génova in Madrid, where the popular party has its central headquarters. And if he does not obtain this result, they will also ring them, but they will emit a different, more subdued sound, because it will be necessary to go looking for Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, to try to guarantee a new parliamentary majority. And from previous experiences, it is already known that an operation of this kind is always a headache.

The day after the Andalusian elections on May 17, the "process of fiscal cession and privileges to Catalan separatism will be restarted". This is the thesis of Juanma Moreno, the PP candidate, presented during the first week of the electoral campaign in Andalusia. And this, as this newspaper published less than a month ago, the new Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, has even closed the door to the total collection of personal income tax. Nevertheless, this argument serves Moreno to argue that a "strong" and "stable" government is needed to "confront this injustice". Vox also resorts to Catalonia, using the old argument of comparative grievance between Catalans and Andalusians against the PSOE candidate, María Jesús Montero, España's predecessor at the head of the Spanish Treasury. In fact, the hypothesis that the right-wing parties fuel is that the PSOE is temporarily deceiving Andalusians so as not to harm Montero in the electoral race. They also reproach him for the new regional financing model agreed with ERC, which they claim harms Andalusia, even though it would add almost 5,000 million euros annually, when Moreno was asking for 4,000, at least until the end of last year.

Political parties have been able to hold the first day of the electoral campaign in Andalusia this May 1st, after the starting gun was fired last dawn. And, despite the president of the Regional Government, the Popular Party's Juanma Moreno Bonilla, not wanting to admit it, the party setting the pace of the campaign is Vox. The Andalusian president knows he could lose the majority by just a handful of votes. And that's why his party is 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 to the far-right has completely disrupted an election that is the Galician leader's first acid test after his umpteenth strategic turn with concessions to Le Penism, which popularized the slogan 'Our people first'.

"We have taken a step forward by obeying the popular mandate. I appreciate the effort of the seven organizations that have made it possible for us to present the best candidacy: For Andalusia". Antonio Maíllo, the candidate for the left-wing coalition led by Esquerra Unida and Sumar, recalled that Podemos is one of these seven formations that next May 17 will try to spring a surprise in the Andalusian Parliament elections. But at Sunday's rally in Seville, there was no trace of Podemos. The purples, who have reluctantly accepted the Andalusian coalition after two resounding electoral defeats (in Castilla y León and Aragón), do not want to get involved in anything that is not strictly essential. And, despite the evident electoral climate in Andalusia, Sunday saw the presentation of the state pact, which also brings together Comuns and Más Madrid.

"We have taken a step forward obeying the popular mandate. I appreciate the effort of the seven organizations that have made it possible for us to present the best candidacy: Por Andalucía". Antonio Maíllo, the candidate of the left-wing coalition led by Izquierda Unida and Sumar, recalled that Podemos is one of these seven formations that next May 17 will try to surprise in the Andalusian Parliament elections. But at Sunday's event in Seville, there was no trace of Podemos. The purple ones, who have grudgingly accepted the Andalusian coalition after two resounding electoral defeats (in Castilla y León and Aragón), do not want to get involved in anything that is not strictly essential. And, despite the evident electoral climate in Andalucía, this Sunday the state pact was presented, which also brings together Comunes and Más Madrid.

The violent waves crash against the jetty. It is pitch black. A rainy and cold winter night. At Chechu's Bar, at the entrance to the port of Barbate, young and old alike defy the storm, smoking and finishing their beer. Most no longer live off the sea, but the sea calls to them. A Civil Guard car drives slowly past the bar. Looks of distrust from one and the other. A few hours later, at dawn, the police will return to the port area. A narcolancha has taken refuge there for a while to avoid the furious thrashing of the water. The traffickers' gomones seek refuge in the ports of the area while they wait for their moment.

The old pier on the Barbate River is a graveyard of timbers weathered by time. The barges sunk beneath the greenish water contrast with the white facades of the houses, demanding a coat of paint. The asphalt is full of ruts and cracks. In Barbate, there is no public transport. The theatre is in ruins. The parks, abandoned. The sports facilities flood when it rains. "We have an endemic lag of 15 or 20 years," admits the mayor of the municipality, Miguel Molina.

Driving through it, from the access roads to the main avenues, Marbella has the quality of being a city that could be many other cities. Better said, any other overcrowded city on the Costa Dorada, Costa Brava, French Riviera, or the Costa del Sol itself, of which it is an emblem. The tallest buildings are hotels and not offices, the apartment blocks, also imposing, have communal swimming pools, and the mountains on the horizon are full of white dots; buildings that have destroyed the natural landscape. But if you venture onto the roads that wind through the mountains, you see they are not chalets or old houses: there are many mansions, complexes, tennis clubs, and exclusive golf courses. The health crossing signs are accompanied by signs that say Arzt and Apotheke, not doctor or pharmacy. The billboards are in English and advertise private clinics, mostly for aesthetic tweaks, to treat low fertility or hair loss, aimed at an older demographic who do not want to - or at least want to hide - getting older.

Easter 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.