Spanish state: 28M, electoral advance, challenges and opportunities for the left

In the municipal elections of 28 of May, the members of the government "progressive coalition" have received a severe blow. The PSOE lost votes and power in its "fiefdoms". Podemos has deepened its languor. The PP has given victory to the right and Vox the greatest growth to the extreme right. Both formations gobbled up the votes of Ciudadanos, that has been on the brink of extinction. There is a direct relationship between the debacle of the reformists and the rise of the most retrograde political sectors. Sánchez responded to the defeat by advancing the general elections for the 23 of July. In a crisis situation that sails in a sea of ​​polarization, the movement to the right expressed in the municipal elections does not guarantee in advance a victory in the presidential elections, although the trend exists. A front of the extreme left is needed, that advances in regrouping the anti-capitalist forces and becomes an alternative to the parties of the regime and the system. In this note we express a first balance that will be completed with the agreements that conform governments.

A clear defeat for the PSOE

Themunicipal election results indicate that the PSOE lost in provincial capitals where it governs and in almost allAutonomous Communities. It is a resounding defeat that activated all the danger alarms in the main government party, Given the evidence that the PP is in full dispute for the presidency with the possibility of reconquering it.  

We can, a more than temporary setback

We can keep falling. He lost deputies in Madrid, Valencia, Asturias, Aragon, Balearic and Canary Islands. As its own leaders recognized, they were bad results“for the entire progressive bloc”. Within the framework of the retreat of the reformist space, IU fared better than Podemos in the communities where it was presented separately. It is not just a temporary setback. We are witnessing the languish of a formation that had the historic opportunity to open a gap for profound changes in the Spanish bipartisanship. Nevertheless, its incorporation into the bourgeois government and its political-programmatic adaptation to"Caste" have collaborated in the placement of a tombstone on the 15M, with an epitaph written in the ink of the '78 regime.

Ciudadanos lost by knockout and resigned

Ciudadanos confirmed its path to extinction. He disappeared from all the regional parliaments and big cities. The course of rise and fall of the oranges was vertiginous: at 2019 got the 8,73% of the votes and were decisive, at 2023 they took out the 1,3% of the votes and are irrelevant. Ciudadanos was left in such a bad shape that he gave up running in the early elections.

The Popular Party was the big winner

The PP was one of the big winners of the day. It strengthened its power in the Region of Murcia and in the Community of Madrid, where the reactionary Isabel Díaz Ayuso achieved a large absolute majority, something similar happened in La Rioja. He seized power from the PSOE in the regional elections of six territories, won in Cantabria, Aragon, Balearic Islands and in the Valencian Community. Lost in Extremadura, but, even so, could form an absolute majority with Vox. Added to this is the electoral turnaround that has already materialized in Andalusia in 2022, with an absolute majority in the Board. After the assumption of Alberto Núñez Feijoó in the match driving, replacing Pablo Casado, the corrupt PP shows an electoral recovery that increased its expectations of wresting power from Sánchez.  

Vox was the fastest growing

Vox almost doubled its support in votes and was the party that also grew the most in positions obtained. from this location, the extreme right has improved its chances of agreeing with the PP to form autonomous and local governments in common in: the Valencian Community, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Cantabria and Extremadura; as it had already done in Castilla y León.

the reformers, the growth of the right and bipartisanship

The reformists of the "progressive coalition" PSOE-Podemos have responsibility for the rise of the right and the ultra-right, mainly because they have caused deep disappointment in the vanguard and in broad social sectors. His promises of profound changes were diluted in makeup to support capitalism and the '78 regime. Their commitments to annul the Gag and Labor Reform laws, among other, they remained in nothing or in partial modifications. The proposals of the "left" in the words were expressed as measures coincident with the right in the facts. In the face of the pandemic, they continued with the cuts that destroyed healthcare. With the crisis of the capitalist economy, the most favored were the rich, businessmen and bankers. The working people continue to see how the standard of living worsens with inflation that reduces wages. Given this reality, and the absence of a widely recognized revolutionary leadership, The right and extreme right have electorally capitalized on social discontent. In Spain and around the world, bipartisanship feeds on a pendulum swing between reformism and the right, whom it is necessary to break with the formation of consistent left alternatives.

electoral advance, mixture of fear and maneuver

The PSOE responded to the coup suffered with an immediate call for early elections for the 23 of July. On the one hand, He did so with fear that his loss of prestige would continue to advance until the original appointment in December and become irreversible.. On the other hand, Pedro Sánchez tries to recreate a maneuver that he already did after the photo of Colón that he portrayed together with the PP, Vox and Citizens. In both cases there is a similar justification: “fight the reactionary wave” concentrating the progressive vote behind him. Both the reformists and the right will appeal more than ever to the slogans of“democracy or fascism” Y"Sanchez or Spain", as false options of those who confront each other electorally, but they share the defense of the capitalist system and the monarchical-parliamentary regime shaped by Francoism. Everything pays toeconomic and political crisis that crosses to the Spanish State.

An indicative that is not a result sung for 23J

Not even the name of Pedro Sánchez, nor that of Núñez Feijóo, were on the ballots, but both were involved in the municipal campaigns giving it the character of a plebiscite on the presidential management and the will to change. As a result, the PP obtained a percentage distance of three points over the PSOE, in a homogeneous trend throughout the country. Although it is a fact that the municipal, almost always, were the prelude to the consolidation of a trend in the general, this does not guarantee a result closed beforehand on 23J. There are many dynamic factors at play, in a country in crisis where sudden changes are common. Polarization is a phenomenon that not only expresses the electoral growth of the right but also the sectors that resist this course, to the workers and peoples who struggle, to the people who stand up to the most retrograde and anachronistic aspects of capitalism and its regime of oppression.  

The stakeouts, a necessity in the anti-capitalist left

In Cadiz, the PP will return to the city government with an absolute majority. Adelante Izquierda Caditana took out seven councilors less than in the previous legislature, sealing the end of the management of José María González «Kichi». in eight years, the "City Hall of Change" turned towards the "Responsible City Council" with the powers and this has had consequences. Nor did it go well for Adelante Andalucía, the project headed by Teresa Rodríguez that did not obtain any important representation.

The anti-capitalist project, increasingly adapted to the institutional regime, away from mobilization and self-organization should be a reason for deep reflection and a change of course, even more so after the final failure of the NPA in France.

in Catalonia, the results of the CUP were mixed, for example, with good votes in Girona and weaker in Barcelona. The Catalan elections and the intervention of the CUP, in some of whose lists SOL participated, will be the subject of a separate note.

For a front of the extreme left

The PSOE and Podemos are neither left nor socialist, it is an obvious fact. SUMAR is recycling, a blurred photocopy of the “progressive management” projected into the future that will bring new frustrations because it does not propose fundamental changes. For now, it is also clear that the disasters of the reformists place in reality the opportunity and the urgent need for a regroupment of the left. That consistently supports theworkers struggles, feminists, of immigrants, the ecosocialists and for the self-determination of Catalonia. That it be postulated as an alternative to bipartisanship and the blackmail of the"Lesser evil" raised by the reformists and also the reactionary postulates of the extreme right, to face it not only in the institutions, as the PSOE and Podemos intend, but also in the streets and anywhere they rear their heads. With a class independence program that provides answers to the immediate needs of the vast majority, promoting the mobilization and demanding the general strike. With the strategy of a government of the workers and the people and a socialist system. A call from the Anticapitalists and the CUP in this direction would be a great step forward for the currents that claim to be revolutionary socialists., like SOL, AT THE, CRT, CR and IR, we should push with all our might. Away from both opportunism and the self-proclaimed sectarianism that fragments the left.