Politics The PSOE is shipwrecked in Castilla y León and confirms the electoral erosion of the party
The data Regionalisms undermine the electorate of the PSOE, which suffers falls of up to 30 points in Soria and León
Feijóo newspaper library makes history in Galicia and nationalism sweeps the Basque Country
The elections in Castilla y León held a week ago once again highlighted the electoral setback of the coalition government.
The PSOE and United We Can left eight seats and 150,000 votes, the majority corresponding to the Socialists.
A bloodletting in a new electoral call that, if the PP crisis does not prevent it, confirms a fixed trend since the coalition government was formed in January 2020 and that has gone parallel to the rise of left-wing nationalism and regionalism, where a good part of the votes lost by the national parties have gone.
There are five autonomous communities that have held elections since that date: Galicia, the Basque Country, Castilla y León, the Community of Madrid and Catalonia.
With the exception of the latter -where, however, there is for the first time an ERC president, that is, from the left-wing independence movement-, in the rest the two government parties have skidded while the nationalists and regionalists have achieved their best electoral results .
Galicians and Basques were the ones who inaugurated this trend in July 2020. In Galicia, the BNG achieved 23.8% of the votes and was the second most voted force and the first from the left.
It grew 15 points against a PSOE that was stagnant at a distance from the nationalists and an
En Marea
, the local brand of United We Can, which disappeared from the Galician Parliament after losing 220,000 votes.
In the Basque Country, EH Bildu achieved its best historical result with 27.9% of the votes, beating the PSOE by 14 points and consolidating itself as the first left-wing party in the community.
Once again, Podemos showed its decline, losing half of its votes.
These two autonomies held elections a few weeks after the worst of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and home confinement, so the PSOE was able to assess that it had suffered normal wear and tear for the situation the country was going through.
The Catalan 'oasis'
The next elections that were held, which were in Catalonia in February 2021, could in fact show a socialist recovery, since the PSC won a Catalan election for the first time and, although it failed to govern, it instilled optimism in the ranks of Pedro Sánchez .
It was, however, a mirage.
A few months later, elections were held in the Community of Madrid, after a failed political operation orchestrated by La Moncloa against the PP in Murcia and in which Pablo Iglesias put his leadership at stake.
What happened in those elections is known: the leader of Podemos abandoned politics, the PSOE suffered a severe blow and the right consolidated a new leadership in Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who promoted the PP throughout Spain, at least until this week.
But the Madrid elections also meant the consolidation of a regional brand, that of Más Madrid, linked to a national project, that of Íñigo Errejón, but with strong localist overtones.
As in Galicia and the Basque Country, the PSOE succumbed to another left-wing force and could only come third, suggesting continued electoral attrition and that the result in Catalonia was more of an oasis than a sign of recovery.
The last blow suffered by the left was a week ago in Castilla y León.
Especially for the PSOE, which has not managed to revalidate its 2019 electoral victory and has seen new regionalisms emerge or re-emerge to its left in Soria and León.
"They are not giving solutions"
In the first, the platform Soria ¡Ya!
emerged taking 42.5% and three attorneys out of the five in dispute, while the PSOE lost 22.6 points.
An unprecedented fall.
In León, with the resurgence of the Unión del Pueblo Leonés (
UPL
), the Socialists lost 6.8 points while the Leonists grew by more than 11. In addition, the UPL was the most voted force in the provincial capital.
What is the reason for this general tendency for the parties of the left to fall while regionalism grows?
"I link it with a certain demobilization, especially in the case of the PSOE, and with a certain wear and tear in terms of illusion or change," details the political scientist
Eduardo Bayón
.
"If they take votes away from them, it is because they are not providing solutions to certain problems. For example, the PSOE in Castilla y León has put fiscal policy and emptied Spain on the same level, instead of making it a backbone of the campaign," he argues. the political scientist
Ana Salazar
.
Looking at the general
Both experts recognize that this growth of regionalism can wear down the PSOE and United We Can in the general elections.
"They can be maintained as long as they do not deflate, because when they enter institutional politics they will have to make decisions that force them to position themselves before their electorate," concludes Bayón.
This setback has a lot to do, in fact, with the strategy launched this week by Pedro Sánchez to demand that the PP break with Vox throughout Spain in exchange for alleged socialist support for the
popular
in Castilla y León.
It is true that the offer was made before the outbreak of the war between Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado, but it revealed a fear that has settled in Ferraz: that in next year's regional and municipal elections, a step prior to the general ones, they may losing dozens of town halls and perhaps some autonomous communities to PP-Vox agreements.
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PSOE
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vox
Spain Emptied
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