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It is easy for the PP to achieve the first objective that Alberto Núñez Feijóo set for his candidate in the elections that Euskadi celebrates this Sunday: to improve the result of 2020. Four years ago, Carlos Iturgaiz, supported by Pablo Casado, obtained the worst result in history and that was in coalition with Ciudadanos: only 60,650 votes, 6.77% of the total and 6 seats. But Feijóo asked Javier de Andrés not only to grow, but to be “determining” in the Basque political future. As the campaign has progressed, this claim has moved into the field of illusion.
“I decided last July not to evaluate polls and you will understand why,” the national spokesperson of the PP, Borja Sémper, ironically replied last Monday to a question about the electoral polls that place Feijóo's party far from the numbers they had. not so long ago. In the party they learned a few months ago that unbridled expectations are terrible company and since the disaster of the general elections they have chosen not to sell results before they occur. However, in the PP they have defended in recent weeks that they were going to significantly improve the results of 2020 and even have influence on the investiture or governance.
Feijóo longed to once again obtain more usual numbers in the regional electoral contests in Euskadi and achieve around 130,000 votes this April 21. These are figures seen in the more or less recent past. And they are, approximately, the votes that the Galician obtained in the general elections of 23J in the Basque Country. This Friday, at a campaign closing event in Bilbao, he expressed it like this: “We ask that those who voted for the PP in the general elections a few months ago vote in the regional elections. If that is so, there will be no Government in the Basque Country without the PP deciding.”
This is a conditional statement that was not the case when the elections were called. At the national headquarters of the PP they assumed a large increase in the vote and hoped to reach 10 deputies in the Parliament of Vitoria. Perhaps it was insufficient to be decisive in the investiture (the Basque Statute prevents voting 'no', which makes the candidate with the most 'yeses' of the deputies the lehendakari), but it did allow him to escape from irrelevance in Euskadi and gain momentum towards the Europeans in June (with the later addition of the call for the Catalans).
The PP has quickly detected that, today, there is no critical mass to achieve it, and one of the proofs has been the limited presence of Feijóo in the campaign, two weeks in which not only has he not devoted himself to Javier de Andrés, But he has taken the opportunity to hold pre-campaign events in Catalonia and even to announce that the director of the European campaign will be Esteban González Pons, which eliminates him as a possible candidate. The pools have immediately opened as to who will lead the ballot in June.
Feijóo has starred in a total of six acts in Euskadi. Half of them, between Thursday and Friday. The difference with the Galician ones in February is notable and the forecast is that in Catalonia it will also have more weight. The relevance of the campaign has thus fallen on the candidate, a veteran Basque politician who has held some important management positions in the past, from the Álava Provincial Council to the Government Delegation.
At the beginning, the design of the campaign focused precisely on talking about management. Of concrete matters and close to the people. From housing, health or youth problems, in line with the problems pointed out by Basques in successive surveys. Although the past of terror was mentioned in all the events, the PP chose not to make ETA the focus of its speech, aware that in Euskadi it moves very few votes.
But the campaign took a turn very soon. Two parties stand out far above the others: PNV and EH Bildu. The victory will be decided by a handful of votes and whoever obtains the most deputies will be played in the remains of each historical territory. The story of recent days has not been marked by the electoral promises of management, but rather by coalition politics.
ETA and the pacts, gasoline for Vox
The PP began the campaign with two very clear objectives for its criticism: the PNV and the PSE-EE. The messages towards voters dissatisfied with the PNV focused on making them responsible for the economic policy of the central government and, specifically, on mimicking the “populism” of Podemos or the initiatives of Yolanda Díaz, leader of Sumar.
The messages addressed to the socialists, for their part, have focused on their alliance with EH Bildu. The PP's thesis was simple: voting for any of the other parties implies voting for the same thing, 'sanchismo' and, on a delayed basis, for EH Bildu. Only the PP represents the constitutionalist alternative, according to this speech.
This Friday, at the closing of the campaign in Vitoria, Feijóo reiterated it. “You have whitewashed them for years and now you are afraid of them,” he said. “We have to honor those who are no longer here and cannot speak,” he pointed out, to point out that the PP “does not disguise itself as anything”, goes “with an open face” with the “will that Bildu is not going to govern” and that will not pay “the Bildu toll.”
Feijóo's men have expressly left Vox out of the game. A tactic already used in other elections that had gone relatively well. Until the controversy generated by the resistance of the EH Bildu candidate, Pello Otxandiano, to calling ETA a “terrorist band.” Both the PNV and the PSE, which govern in coalition, saw the opportunity to hit your rivalwhich has managed to capitalize on the wave of change that has arisen among a large part of Basque society, especially young people.
Unintentionally, Otxandiano introduced the element of ETA into the campaign, which revitalized Vox and ruined the PP's strategy, which, with Ciudadanos already absorbed and out of the game in the Basque Autonomous Community, longed to get those from Santiago out of the way. Abascal.
The extreme right barely has any representation in Euskadi, and in 2020 they achieved only one female representative, for Álava, thanks to just over 4,000 votes. The other 11,000 in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa were not used to obtain representation. Now in the PP they believe they have that seat within their reach. At the end of the campaign, Vox has chosen to go on the offensive against the PP, especially after an interview in which Javier de Andrés said he was willing to support a reissue of the current coalition government between the PNV and the PSOE, although with conditions.
The statement allowed Abascal to paraphrase the PP itself and say that “voting for the PNV is voting for the PP, which is voting for Bildu on a delayed basis.” A blow that has gone down badly in Genoa, where they have preferred not to respond directly. “Everything depends on remains and percentages,” they point out in the direction of the party. And it is better not to agitate direct rivals to win a seat in Álava.
