The President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, opened this Sunday in Gibraleón (Huelva) the pre-campaign for the Andalusian elections, called for next May 17, with the aim of saving the socialist electoral base, at a minimum according to the latest polls. As well as relaunching his candidate for the Junta, former minister María Jesús Montero, who registers the worst ratings of all her competitors in the same surveys. Sánchez has armed himself with one of his fundamental assets, the “no to war”, and has announced that Spain will formally request, at the meeting of the Twenty-Seven’s Foreign Ministers on Tuesday in Luxembourg, “to break the association agreement with Israel”. “A Government that violates international law or the principles of the EU cannot be its partner,” he justified.
Sánchez took to the stage for the first pre-campaign rally, before about 2,000 people (several dozen were left outside the venue due to capacity limitations), in a province that was a historic socialist stronghold. With his presence in Andalusia, which will be recurrent until 17-M, he tries to relaunch the second minister who is pushing for regional elections in this legislature. The strategy with the previous head of Education, Pilar Alegría, in Aragon resulted in 18 deputies, the minimum socialist representation in this community.
In Andalusia, the forecasts are no better. The survey by the Andalusian Studies Center (Centra) last Tuesday gives Montero 21% of the votes and between 26 and 27 seats, below the electoral floor reached in 2022 (30 seats). The same poll, prepared by an institution dependent on the Junta, places Montero as the leader with the worst rating of all candidates: 3.7 out of 10.
Against this trend, Sánchez has wielded the recent meeting of progressive presidents in Barcelona, pacifism, a positive personal balance of government action, and the regularization of immigrants against the PP, whom he has accused of opposing this procedure because “a party that was financed in B [in relation to the Kitchen case] wants workers who are paid in B”.
The President of the Executive has accused the PP, “with Vox inside or outside [in allusion to the recent government agreement in Extremadura]”, of blocking measures that favor access to housing or aid to the working classes in the face of the effects of the war or increases in the minimum wage or the revaluation of pensions. Regarding this last aspect, as he already announced in the summer of 2024, he assured: “In 2027 we will fill the pension fund with 25,000 million euros to secure them for young people.”
Montero, as former vice president and former minister, has also had to resort to her particular legislative balance to build her candidacy and her electoral slogan: “Defend the public.” In this sense, she has described the breast cancer screening crisis, which has caused delays of more than a year in tumor diagnoses, as “the greatest negligence of a health system in this country.” The former Minister of Health has assured that, with her in the Junta, no one will wait more than 80 days for a health test. She has also promised the construction of 10,000 homes and to facilitate access to them.
“We are witnessing a dismantling of public services. They are leading us to the collapse of health systems and, therefore, social systems. We are not going to allow them to impoverish us. In these elections, Andalusians are playing for their lives, they are playing for their health,” she defended in Gibraleón, one of the towns where the PSOE retains an absolute majority.
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