Ayuso in Madrid won thanks to Trumpian tones
The PP won the elections with a speech and rhetoric with a Trumpian and Berlusconian flavor. The analysis by Steven Forti, Professor of Contemporary History at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, taken from International Affairs
Can regional elections change the national political landscape? Sometimes it happened, other times it didn't. This is the big question that many in Spain are asking themselves after the vote on May 4th in the autonomous community of Madrid. The results do not allow many readings: the right wins, while the left, which governs the country, comes out with broken bones.
With a record participation (76%), an even more significant figure in times of pandemics and on an unprecedented weekday, the Partido Popular (Pp) doubles the votes obtained in 2019 (from 22 to 44%), close to the absolute majority ( 65 seats out of 136) and regained the hegemony on the right, lost in the last five years with the entry of two competitors, the liberals of Ciudadanos and the extreme right of Vox. The former collapsed to 3.5%, remaining below the threshold, when two years ago they were on the verge of overtaking the PP. Vox, on the other hand, slightly improves the results of 2019 (9.1% and 13 seats), but does not break through.
The move to call early elections by the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso has therefore turned out to be more than successful: the PP will be able to go back to governing the region alone, sweeping away its former government partner – Ciudadanos – in one fell swoop and reducing the Vox's expectations. It is true that Madrid has been a stronghold of the popular for 26 years and that Ayuso will need the external support of the ultra-right, but will be able to govern alone, albeit in a minority. A scenario that few had foreseen. It is a victory with no ifs and buts which relaunches the PP also on the national stage.
THUND LEFT, IGLESIAS LEAVES THE SCENE
On the left, the faint but never dormant hopes of recovering Madrid after more than a quarter of a century have melted like snow in the sun. The socialists suffer the worst blow in their history in the region: with 16.8% and 24 deputies they are even overtaken by Más Madrid (17%, 24 seats), a formation founded two years ago by the former number two of Podemos, Íñigo Errejón , who converts his candidate, Mónica García, into the real leader of the opposition in Ayuso.
Legislature rises for the government While Unidas Podemos (Up) improves its results (from 7 to 10 seats, with 7.2%), but does not get the leap forward hoped for by Pablo Iglesias , who in March resigned from government vice president to run in these regional elections. Iglesias has indeed saved what can be saved – Up risked being left out of the Regional Assembly – but was unable to activate the vote on the left too much. More likely, a divisive figure like yours has exaggerated an electoral campaign in itself already quite polarized – has received death threats and now lives under guard – and has resulted in an unprecedented mobilization of the right-wing vote. This was admitted by Iglesias himself, who on the night of May 4 announced that he was abandoning politics, certainly not positive news for the government.
The Madrid vote will have repercussions at the national level. The question is to understand to what extent. First, the coalition government formed by the PSOE Socialists and Unidas Podemos is now weaker. The bad result of the socialists in Madrid cannot but also be read as a punishment vote for the government's handling of the health and socio-economic crisis in the last year. In short, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is not at all strengthened. Far from it.
The legislature, in itself already very complicated in the context of the pandemic, will therefore be even more uphill for a minority executive that counts on the support of various regionalist and nationalist formations in a very fragmented Parliament. In a crucial phase for the Iberian country, as well as for all of Europe, it will be very complicated, if not impossible, to reach agreements on necessary reforms – pensions, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the regional financial system, among others – for which majorities are needed. qualified. Even more than now, the PP will use Madrid as a bastion to overthrow the government.
Without forgetting that the age-old Catalan question remains to be resolved: will Sánchez have the courage to pursue, as promised, an agenda of relaxation with Barcelona? With a barricadero PP and reinvigorated by Ayuso's success it will not be easy. And this could have as a consequence the withdrawal of the indispensable support of the Catalan separatists in the Cortes of Madrid.
POPULAR PEOPLE STOP VOX, BUT AT WHAT PRICE?
The PP won the elections with a speech and rhetoric with a Trumpian and Berlusconian flavor. Ayuso's lemma – to which the left have opposed an epic and probably exaggerated "democracy or fascism" – was "communism or freedom": the freedom to open bars and restaurants in defiance of health restrictions decided by the central government or to lower even more taxes in the richest region of the country, where taxation is already the lowest in all of Spain.
Many elections now play more on the frame that a candidate manages to impose than on real data: with a 30% higher mortality compared to the rest of the country, very little has been said about Ayuso's bad health management and much more about the possibility of be able to have a beer in the bars open until midnight.
The popular have held back Vox, of course, but at the price of turning even further to the right and radicalizing their discourse. The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, in October broke away from the ultra-right, harshly criticizing it in Parliament: now, like it or not, he is forced to embrace it. In short, the PP has chosen with Ayuso to be more Boris Johnson than Angela Merkel.
It remains to be seen how much Madrid's results are exportable to the rest of the country. The exit of Ciudadanos is now certain, but the rest are still unknowns (from the resistance of the socialists to the correlation of strength between PP and Vox). In any case, they will be intense months where a change of political cycle favorable to the right could begin. For example, other early regional elections are not to be discarded, such as in Andalusia where the PP, which governs in coalition with Ciudadanos, could try the same play as Ayuso. The road to Pedro Sánchez is now more uphill than before.
Article published on affarinternazionali.it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ayuso-a-madrid-ha-vinto-grazie-a-toni-trumpiani/ on Sat, 08 May 2021 05:04:58 +0000.