MADRID, 18 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Vox was left out of the Galician Parliament this Sunday, as all the polls predicted, and Galicia remains the only autonomous community in which it has not yet achieved representation. Furthermore, it has practically not improved its results compared to the Galician regional elections held in 2020.
Specifically, with 94% counted, those from Santiago Abascal have garnered 2.19% of the votes on this election day, compared to 2.05% in the previous elections. The percentage is far from the 5% barrier necessary to obtain seats in the Galician Parliament.
As Galicia is the only territory in which Vox does not have a presence in the regional Parliament, the expectations of those of Santiago Abascal for this 18F were not very high and were summarized in obtaining representation. With one or two seats in the regional Cortes, the idea of ??the formation was to condition the Galician government, which Alfonso Rueda will nevertheless retain with an absolute majority.
Those from Santiago Abascal saw possibilities in A Coruña and Pontevedra, which are the Galician provinces where they obtained the most votes in the 2020 regional elections: 2.12% and 1.96%, respectively.
In fact, it was in these two places where the Vox leader turned his attention during the campaign, especially in A Coruña. The opening and closing were held there and he has visited various locations in the province on several occasions as part of the campaign.
The PP publicly and repeatedly asked Vox to give up running for the 18F, under the justification that, if it did so, the electorate would divide the vote destined for the right-wing bloc and they focused on the fact that the polls repeatedly showed their limited chances of success. .
Those of Abascal rejected the idea, claiming that they have “the right” to attend the elections, and placed the responsibility for an eventual failure of those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo on the shoulders of the PP itself. Vox sources then pointed out that if the ‘popular’ party lost their absolute majority in Galicia it would be due to attrition and recalled that they already ran in 2020 and achieved poor results.
The dispute between PP and Vox, government partners in five other autonomies, due to the division of the vote in the right-wing bloc, has played a leading role in both of their campaigns for 18F. In the final stretch of the campaign the issue practically monopolized the rallies.
However, Abascal’s supporters have always maintained that their votes did not take away from the PP, but rather took away seats from BNG and PSOE, from “the left and the independence movement”, as Abascal, other Vox leaders and the Galician candidates have stressed. .
The relationship between those of Feijóo and those of Abascal has been strained by the refusal of the ‘popular’ to articulate a common front against Pedro Sánchez and the amnesty, as Vox demands. The leader of Vox reproaches the PP for holding a “half-time opposition” for reaching agreements with the Government, for example to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) or to reform article 49 of the Constitution to eliminate the term ” diminished”.
Abascal and other leaders of his party have used these arguments as ammunition throughout the campaign, to which they added the information that Génova valued the amnesty for those involved in the ‘procés’ that Junts is asking for and that it is open to a “conditional” pardon. “to Puigdemont. Since this information became known in the middle of the electoral campaign, Vox has sought to profit from the contradiction of the ‘popular’.
Abascal raised the tone against Feijóo from that moment on and made the ‘popular’ leader a target at his rallies. He attacked him and the block on the left indifferently. He renamed the PP as “right-wing fraudster”, instead of the “right-wing coward” coined in the 2019 general elections, during the time of Pablo Casado.
He also toughened the attacks on the PP to dismiss the accusation of the ‘popular’ of colluding with the PSOE: “But what clamp or what the hell?” he asked in Vigo, stressing that it is the ‘popular’ who have points in common and reach agreements with the socialists.
However, in view of this Sunday’s election results, Galicia will not become a battleground between the two, as the PP retains its hegemony and Vox is irrelevant.
Galicia is a historically complicated autonomy for those of Santiago Abascal. The best result achieved by the party there was in the November 2019 general elections, where they obtained more than 116,000 votes, 7.91% of the votes. Their results already decreased in 23J, when they obtained just over 77,000 votes, 4.7%.
It was in the general elections of April 2019 when they stood out, with 86,000 supports, 5.27% of the votes. Until then, their support in Galicia had been very residual: in the general elections of 2016 and 2015 they did not reach even 1% of the votes.
Abascal’s leadership apparently will not be damaged by the fiasco in Galicia, given that the result was predicted and, furthermore, he has just been re-elected president of Vox for another four years without opposition. Abascal decided to advance the Extraordinary General Assembly in which his leadership would be revalidated and his Executive would be remodeled to January.
Although the party explained that the change of date was due to the intention of facing this 2024 election – elections in Galicia, the Basque Country and the European Parliament – with the internal issue already resolved, there were voices that assured that it was an attempt to shield the Presidency of Abascal before criticism and questions could arise about the failure in Galicia.
