On the ground, he did not obtain an absolute majority, an objective he admitted privately around María Guardiola, where it was possible. The PP did not achieve the main objective of its electoral support in Extremadura: reducing its dependence on Vox. The extremeña president was summoned with the intention of improving her conditions of government, since the party of Santiago Abascal could not approve the hypotheses. But this Sunday’s result does not allow him to have any more free hands. The victory is bitter for the PP candidate, who wins the elections but with an increase in ground (29), far from her expectations, and is four from the absolute majority, so that she will again depend on a very large Vox which doubles its representatives (11). Genoa celebrates the “batacazo” of the PSOE in a historic stronghold of the izquierda, while the battle rages.
“The guts took more than expected,” lamented a leader of the PP summit this Sunday, referring to Vox, the biggest beneficiary of the night. The PP has not seen the rise of the ultras. The national leadership predicted only 48 hours before that Santiago Abascal’s party would fall to 12% of the vote, and it ultimately rose to 17%.
The popular have underestimated the rise of the extreme right, which is the one that best approves the fall of the PSOE, instead of the PP. Among those who left the Socialists, who experienced a historic fall (up to 18 scandals), Abascal won six and the PP alone, while the Podemos candidacy won three. The problem for the PP, which is delighted that “the government has 60% of the votes in the stronghold par excellence of the government in Spain”, is that within the government bloc the battle is exacerbating, with its rival in unstoppable growth. While the PP gains four points, Vox makes nine. “We prefer that the vote goes to Vox rather than to the PSOE”, contrary to sources in the PP leadership, who insist that what matters is the decision of the electorate and that the PP and Vox support it, even if it means having to increasingly unite their destiny with that of Abascal.
The PP leadership had defined four “declared” objectives for the extreme elections: reduce dependence on Vox, exceed 40% of the votes, reach 30 votes (compared to 28) and amplify the difference with the PSOE. Throughout the campaign, Genoa avoided setting an absolute majority (in 33 years) as a goal, to lower expectations, but in the extreme PP he worked to achieve it and closed the campaign by privately declaring that it was only possible to achieve it, according to sources surrounding the popular candidate. The general environment in which the party closed the campaign was that the absolute was within reach, with the uncertainty of whether the mistakes of last week could have been given up to this possibility. Finally, it was over.
According to Genoa’s prediction, which the top brass reiterated when the review was often reached, the most popular corresponded to their goals: they had to reach 30 times (if they reached 29) and, above all, in which Guardiola was less dependent on Vox.
For the extreme president, Abascal’s abstention will be enough to be invested, since he is four votes short of the absolute majority but he has more than that left, but in all this indicates that it will be a costly abstention. The PP admits that, with the return of Vox to the polls, the ultras will not reduce the price of their support, as the PP wanted.
It will also be difficult for him to do so after a campaign characterized by a clinch between Guardiola and Abascal. The Vox leader began to suggest that the PP should do without Guardiola if it needed his support, and she disputed the insult by calling him “macho.” Relations between the PP and Vox in Extremadura have been particularly tense since the extremeña president tried to prevent them from entering his government after the 2023 elections. Finally, I had to give in and governed with the ultras until they broke all governments with the PP in the summer of 2024.
Fuentes de Génova declares that they will reduce their dependence on Vox because they no longer need an affirmative vote to abstain and because now the ultras can no longer enter PP governments. But I admit that I don’t know the price, and I recognize that it won’t be free. Do you fear that Vox will enter your government?, journalists asked María Guardiola during her appearance at the media house. “I’m not worried at all,” he replied. “I don’t have red lines, they are green, white and black,” he responded ambiguously, referring to the colors of the Extremadura flag.
The PP’s national reading focuses on the debacle of the PSOE, with the argument that the socialist defeat in Extremadura “is an exclusive merit of Pedro Sánchez”. “Congratulations to María Guardiola for an indisputable victory. Extremadura has spoken and I say that there is no more Sanchismo. If the report falls and the wall of Pedro Sánchez and the change in Spain are closer”, says the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a message on the social network
Extremadura gave the pistolazo exit of the electoral cycle that the PP had designed for a defeat against the PSOE: after the elections of Aragon (February 8), Castile and León (March) and Andalusia (June). Genoa targets Aragon and President Jorge Azcón follows scrutiny of national headquarters with Feijóo. “The defeat of the PSOE is great and after a great loss in history, we are working on the next big evening of the Popular Party,” maintained the leadership. “After winning today, we are working to win new things on February 8. On that day, Pedro Sánchez should not be president of the government.”
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