Page’s 17th seat and other keys to the only absolute socialist majority of the autonomous communities

With an electoral turnaround that gives the PP an overwhelming victory at the state level in the regional and municipal elections of 28M that contrasts with the victory by the minimum of the socialist Emiliano García-Page in Castilla-La Mancha achieving the only absolute autonomous majority of the socialists of the country, it is crucial to understand the keys that have contributed to this autonomous community now being a political exception in Spain.

The Castilian-Manchego president has obtained the highest percentage of votes for the PSOE in all of Spain with 45%, being the second best result for a regional candidate after that obtained by the Popular Party in the Community of Madrid. The Socialists have also been the force with the most votes in the regional elections in 704 of the 919 existing municipalities in Castilla-La Mancha, which represent more than 80% of the region’s inhabitants. They have also obtained the greatest difference with the Popular Party in all of Spain, 11.35%.

Seat number 17 was the key to a heart-stopping night during the vote. That is the number that marks the absolute majority in the Castilian-Manchego Parliament, one of the two smallest in Spain, along with that of La Rioja. The vote count for the regional elections remained with that number of seats for the PSOE until, close to 50%, it dropped to 16. At that time, PP and Vox added to govern. He changed again two other times as the scrutiny progressed.

At that time, the Government of Castilla-La Mancha was deciding in the Ciudad Real constituency, where the Socialists have led the PP by almost a thousand votes. This party was unable to overcome that gap, not even through joining Vox, because the Ciudadanos votes in this province, almost 2,400, were left without representation and the seat in contention, number 17, went to the PSOE with the scrutiny already very advanced.

Added to this dispute are other political factors, relevant to the fact that the socialist votes have exceeded the sum of the rights. In the first place, that García-Page is not a typical politician. He is part of the group of socialist ‘barons’ who have not made things easy for Pedro Sánchez during this legislature: Javier Lambán from Aragon or Ximo Puig from Valencia. His disagreements with the president come from afar, since the socialist schism of 2016. They have not stopped except on a few occasions or when they have shared an act together, and even in these meetings the relationship is cordial but not very warm.

During the campaign, Page has not stopped repeating that he has always defended and will defend the region above the interests and acronyms of his party. And he does so. Is there a message there for Ferraz? Because the Castilian-Manchego discourse is conservative, sometimes practically centrist and mainly moderate. It is traced to the traditional character of the majority of Castilian-Lamancha society. In an interview with elDiarioclm.es, his spokesperson, Blanca Fernández, made it clear: “We defend hunting and bullfighting and we renounce left-wing stereotypes.”

Taking into account that there has been a possible vote to punish Pedro Sánchez, Page’s revalidation may be linked to that discourse and to a region -conservative in the background- traditionally polarized between two parties that sometimes compete for the same electorate. In the case of the PSOE, with progressive but contained social policies, liberal economic measures and a defense of the environment with contradictions but pioneering in some aspects.

Another key is that Page has maintained practically the same strategy as in the 2019 elections, before and during the campaign. His profile as a “national policy commentator” in a tone critical of the Government and especially of Podemos (with whom he himself governed in his first term as president) has given him even more projection in the state media.

And in all these declarations there are several arguments in common: continuous maxims against the independence movement, for the equality of all the autonomous communities, against the Tagus-Segura transfer (with a very recent decisive victory when the ecological flows of the Tagus were approved) and with a management of the pandemic well “sold” despite Castilla-La Mancha being one of the most affected regions and in which there are still chiaroscuros about the management and impact of the socio-sanitary crisis. And it has managed to ‘survive’ despite the fact that it has not reversed all the cuts, so criticized from the socialist ranks, of Dolores de Cospedal.

It is also very significant that García-Page has won votes, few but significant: more than 7,000. The reason, the distribution by districts, the remains of votes that are left without representation and an increase in participation by two points that has gone to the PP, with an increase from 10 to 12 seats, and the entry of Vox in the Courts with four seats, scratching remains of electoral constituencies.

Socialist sources also specify to elDiarioclm.es that the PP “punctured” with one of the “dirtiest” campaigns in memory. He tried to “hide” the controversy over the irregularities in the mileage allowances of the PP candidate, Paco Núñez, and he did so with initiatives such as the New Generations vans deployed throughout the region with photographs that included Page with the leader of Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi. “That unworthy message has not penetrated, people are not stupid,” they indicate in the party. In fact, former president José Bono came to the end of the campaign to give Page a hand by revealing that he was threatened by ETA.

Bono was also joining Page at his celebration last night. Because the socialist hegemony, which was only interrupted by the Cospedal government between 2011 and 2015, has another four years ahead in which Page will maintain his “political and strategic” vision, as he himself announced shortly after the victory of him

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