In the corridors of Ferraz there is a poster with a close-up of Pedro Sánchez on a white background. "Now yes," it reads overprinted in large red letters. It is a "now" longed for by the socialists, a past, 2019, when the ballot boxes smiled on them. Four years later, not now. Debacle. Sinking. Punishment. Spain censures Pedro Sánchez and sinks the PSOE. Of nine communities that governed, the Socialists only retain three: Asturias, which remains as a great socialist stronghold, Castilla-La Mancha -Page was in the eaves throughout the night- and Navarra. A squandered territorial power, a harsh corrective of the Spaniards in an appointment set as a preamble to the general elections that will be at the end of the year.

In the first national election since 2019, they fail the cotton test. The polls certify the dynamics of the vote against Sánchez, against the Government because La Moncloa and Ferraz accepted and endorsed a dynamic in a national key, starring and hoarding ads. The Socialists are bleeding, in an electoral catastrophe that puts Sánchez's project in check.

The mayors and, above all, the regional presidents, trusted that the voter would value the management of the one who ruled in these years, pandemic and war in Ukraine included, as had happened in the last regional elections held. But the 28-M leaves readings such as that the penalization of the candidates has been such that it has not mattered to mark distances and be critical as the Aragonese Javier Lambán, who loses the government, or more akin to the president of the Government as the Valencian Ximo Puig or the Balearic Francina Armengol, also evicted. Or that the presence of Sánchez in rallies in different parts of Spain did not even serve for the Socialists to retain in those fiefdoms: Seville, Puertollano, Alcalá de Henares, Gijón, Valencia -cogobernaban-, Palma de Mallorca ...

"I've traveled all over Spain, I've stepped on a lot of streets. One thing was the perception in the government and in the party and another what you perceived in the street. Yes, something had been improved, but there was and remains much to be worked on." This is how a prominent socialist leader sums up the state of the party, recognizing a voting scheme against Sánchez in these elections. Two images exemplify the socialist collapse: in just one hour, between 21 p.m. and 22 p.m., the red color disappeared from the Spanish map to light up the blue; they lose "the soul of the PSOE", Seville and as a symptom of the decline, they lose Huelva, Granada, Toledo, Castellón, Segovia, Burgos, Gijón, Murcia, Palma... to Valladolid, which did not enter into any catastrophic forecast. Shovels of dirt in the project of Sánchez, who runs out of bellows on the trampoline right now.

"These elections are about electing mayors and regional presidents," claimed the socialist candidates. But the Government proposed these municipal and regional as a platform to sell management. The candidates shelled and made pedagogy with the measures implemented from the Council of Ministers, and Sánchez finished with announcements, some new, others recovered. A strategy that bothered some territories, because they saw how their demands were not winked and their big day was eclipsed with initiatives of a national nature. "It was a strategy of ads made in Moncloa without calibrating well the route that could have that," say socialist charges. A staging that allowed the PP to settle the framework of "plebiscite" against Sánchez and hammer with the message that 28-M was an opportunity to "repeal sanchismo".

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