UNDER REGISTRATION

Updated Tuesday, February 13, 2024-00:16

The elections being held on Sunday in Galicia are a decisive event, almost existential in nature, because what is at stake is much more than the election of the next president of the Xunta. The Galicians will have to choose between

two radically different ideas of society and Spain

. One is what Alfonso Rueda's PP represents: a proposal of stability, coexistence and moderation that avoids fueling confrontation between citizens. It is the model that operates in Ga

It has been going on since 2009, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo ended the erratic government action of the bipartite PSdG-BNG to chain four absolute majorities, becoming strong, precisely, in the weakness of the previous Executive:

management efficiency.

The alternative is a compendium of parties between the left and nationalism that, according to the polls, only Ana Pontón's BNG can lead. A "plurinational" and disruptive bloc that acts as a front, and with which José Ramón Gómez Besteiro - a weak candidate, incapable of connecting with the electorate - has transferred Sánchez's model to Galicia: to remain in Moncloa,

the socialists have given up competing with the PP

and to exercise its supporting role in Spain, presenting itself as

auxiliary force

of nationalism in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, where Pontón is promoted. The only proposal from this bloc - in which Sumar will surely not be, a defeat without nuances for Yolanda Díaz - is none other than dragging Galicia into the identity and territorial conflict.

According to the survey that the CIS published yesterday, the Pontón bloc would take the Xunta from Rueda. With 42% of the votes, the

popular

would win the elections, close to the absolute majority, but the rise of the BNG, with 33.4%, would bring Pontón to the Government after allying with a PSdG in decline, which could fall to nine seats, well below its historical floor. . The crisis of Galician socialism is unprecedented.

The transfer of votes collected by the CIS is revealing: up to 29.4% of those who supported the PSOE in 2020 today would do so for the BNG. It is the fruit of Ana Pontón's conscientious political makeup operation, who has managed to wrap her radical project in a friendly face with great practicality. The candidate uses a considered tone and focuses her messages on the social agenda, in the style of EH Bildu, to

attract the most moderate urban strata

. However, its program is clearly sovereignist: it speaks of the "right of self-determination", seeks to reduce the State to a minimum - from the expulsion of the Civil Guard to the establishment of its own judicial power - and demands linguistic immersion, like ERC and Together.

What happens in Galicia will have an important national reading, and even more so since the PP controversy with the "conditional" pardon for Puigdemont. Both the socialists and Vox - residual in Galicia - are taking advantage to equate Feijóo with Sánchez, in an impossible comparison that does not withstand the slightest contrast with the facts. Leader

popular

a lot of political power is at stake

in Galicia, but the dilemma is deeper, and directly affects the idea of ​​Spain as a common project.

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