The main message of the first major Andalusian pre-campaign rally this Sunday in Córdoba with the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the community president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, is that “what happened in Extremadura” must be avoided by all means. The Popular Party disavows the coalition government pact with Vox just days after signing it, and the PP’s first call to mobilize its electorate in the elections on May 17 in Andalusia is, precisely, that they must “work their socks off” to prevent the same thing from happening as in the last regional elections. The mission, they say, is no longer to win, but to avoid “the mess,” a euphemism very consolidated internally with which the PP refers to crossing its red lines and adopting positions it had never assumed before the far-right splinter party began to bite into its electorate.
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In Moreno Bonilla’s circle, they are aware that the threat from Santiago Abascal’s party is still there, but, at the same time, they believe that the “bad example” of Extremadura, with its baroness retracting in writing her solemn rejection of Vox’s policies that she had expressed before the cameras —“I cannot allow those who deny gender violence, dehumanize immigrants, and throw the LGTBI flag in the trash into my government,” she said—, will serve to mobilize their own: those they already have and those who hesitate between their ballot and Vox’s.
Moreno Bonilla, who knows he holds an endangered species, the absolute majority, was very careful not to utter the two words together, always referring to the goal as a “majority of stability,” but he warned an enthusiastic audience —PP mayors and councilors in the community gathered at the Parador de Córdoba— that, no matter how many pats on the back he gets on the street, and no matter how much they tell him he’s going to “sweep,” repeating the feat is “very difficult.” Just hours after the Copa del Rey final, played this Saturday in Seville, the Andalusian president resorted to a football analogy: “Let no one believe this is won. It will probably be a final decided by penalties.” And then, he added: “We cannot afford the luxury of our Extremaduran brothers, who have been blocked for six months by the whim of another political force. We don’t follow anyone. We have forged our own path.” A path he described as one of “moderation, harmony, common sense, and good manners, without quarrels or insults, unlike other times,” he stressed, in which his party had “tried to imitate what others were doing,” in allusion to the PP’s eternal dilemma on how to relate to Vox. “We cannot settle for an excellent grade. We need an honors degree to avoid getting into trouble,” he insisted.
Feijóo did utter the two words together, “absolute majority,” to recall the four he achieved in Galicia and to assert himself before the public —this Sunday in Córdoba, the most sought-after for selfies was the Andalusian president, not the aspirant to La Moncloa— after failing in his first attempt to unseat Sánchez from the government. The PP leader resumed the football analogy used by Moreno Bonilla to say that he was “the best goalkeeper” Andalusia could have, but, like the candidate to revalidate the presidency of the Junta, he insisted that “the match cannot be considered won.” “People are free to vote for whoever they want,” he added, “but the mess solves nothing. It only delays solutions.”
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Unlike in other election campaign rallies in recent months, the PP candidate did not allude to Vox’s big hits, to which a part of the party attributes much of the loss of votes. Neither immigration nor the usual cultural battles of the far-right, which the Popular Party occasionally adopts depending on how they interpret the polls, appeared in his speech. “We know how to do more than just point out the problem. We know how to solve it. We don’t have magic wands; we have good teams,” declared Moreno Bonilla. “Have you ever managed anything?” Feijóo asked from the stage to an imaginary Vox member. “I don’t want a doctor who has never operated on anyone before to operate on me,” he added, ignoring that in Extremadura, they have just been handed three operating rooms: a vice-presidency and the ministries of Deregulation, Social Services and Family, on the one hand, and Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Environment, on the other.
The Andalusian president did not include the cancer screening crisis in his region in his assessment, although he admitted that “waiting lists are high [they are above the Spanish average].” He did boast about the approved tax cuts and those yet to come. Feijóo, just in case, wanted to add later, during his speech: “It is perfectly compatible to have functioning public services and pay less tax. Where is that demonstrated? In Andalusia.” The inhabitants of the community are, however, the Spaniards who give the lowest rating to their health system, according to the latest CIS Health Barometer: only 38.8% rate it positively, almost 13 points below the national average. Centra, the Andalusian government’s opinion study, also reports that healthcare is the primary problem in the region, above unemployment.
Fiscal policy monopolized a good part of Feijóo’s and Moreno Bonilla’s speeches, because, in addition to being a trademark and campaign classic, it allows the Popular Party to attack their socialist opponent, María Jesús Montero, former First Vice President of the Government and former Minister of Finance. Feijóo accused the central government of practicing a “collecting cruelty” that makes Spaniards wonder “if it’s worth working.” “And Sánchez’s recipes,” he added, “Montero cooks them very well. That’s the menu they want for Andalusia.” The PP leader predicted that the socialists would hit rock bottom in the elections on May 17 and that their candidate “would return to Madrid.” Moreno Bonilla criticized his rival for not having done more for her community while she was in the central government despite being Andalusian and even joked with Feijóo that it was more convenient not to make him Vice President of the Government because he would always be “standing up for Andalusia.” Immediately afterward, he ruled himself out for any succession race: “I will never leave Andalusia.” Socialist Montero, by the way, recently avoided committing to annul the tax cuts approved by the PP in the community if she manages to govern. Officially, it’s called an electoral pre-campaign, but all candidates have long been immersed in a permanent campaign, where the primary goal is not to step on toes. And above all, not to get into trouble.