The PP dyes the regional and municipal map blue while waiting for Vox

A historical stronghold of socialism falls like the Extremadura of Guillermo Fernández Vara. The Government that came out of the Pacte del Botànic that gave birth to change in the Valencian Community after decades of corruption by the popular falls. The PSOE cedes the Balearic Islands and Aragon to the sum of the rights, which will also allow the assault on the fortress of Miguel Ángel Revilla in Cantabria. In Murcia it will be necessary to have Vox to guarantee another legislature more to the right, but in La Rioja not even that: there the rookie candidate of the PP, Gonzalo Capellán, has an absolute majority.

None, in any case, with the numbers achieved by Isabel Díaz Ayuso in Madrid, who despite losing more than 45,000 votes compared to 2021, with 47.3% of the ballots, is already approaching the percentages of the great records of the Aguirrismo before the bankruptcy of the bipartisanship and the PP split into three. She campaigned to get Pedro Sánchez out of the way, but who she will lose sight of is Vox, two years after parting with Ciudadanos. Four years after both parties promoted her to the presidency with 22% of the votes after losing to Ángel Gabilondo, Ayuso has swept off the map the two formations that led her to Puerta del Sol when she was a semi-unknown candidate. Ciudadanos no longer has seats or councilors and Vox will be an irrelevant party in the opposition, which has also left 88,000 votes since 2021. Of the leader who elected Ayuso in 2019 as the headliner, Pablo Casado, there is no news.

And yet, despite her overwhelming victory, the electoral reversal of the PP everywhere relativizes in a certain way this second victory for Ayuso: the Madrid leader joins the club of absolute majorities, yes, but she shares a podium not only with Moreno Bonilla, also with the candidate from La Rioja and even with the mayor of his city, José Luis Martínez Almeida.

Both, the mayor and the president, went out exultant to celebrate on the balcony of Génova 13 together with the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was able to live his first great night since he became president of the PP 13 months ago now.

While Almeida clamored to the supporters that Feijóo was getting the face of Prime Minister, his leader made gestures with his thumbs up. The path from him to La Moncloa is now clearer: in a month and a half the bulk of communities and capitals will belong to the PP.

Despite its discreet results in Madrid, where it will have nothing to say either in the Community or the City Council, Vox is the second winner of the night: it improves its numbers in the vast majority of constituencies and above all it is in a position to condition governments in Cantabria, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Aragon and Extremadura, now without Citizens in the equation. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, has been warning that they will demand to enter the administration and that they are not going to give away any government to the PP.

Symbolic capitals that pass to the PP

Numerically, the PSOE holds up somewhat better than the parties to its left, loses a vote point and even manages to grow in some constituencies, but the result is equally dire: it does not capitalize on the fall of its partners and is only in a position to maintain the governments of Castilla-La Mancha with the absolute majority in extremis of Emiliano García Page, Navarra if it reaches an agreement with EH Bildu and in the Canary Islands it is at the mercy of what the PP and the Canary Coalition do.

In the municipal ones, it loses very symbolic places such as the city councils of Seville and Valladolid, where Óscar Puente ruled for eight years. On June 17, the PP will take the baton of command in Palma, Logroño and Ferrol also from the hands of socialist mayors. In Santiago, the capital of Galicia, the PSOE finds itself overwhelmed by the BNG, which has all the numbers to win the mayoralty. And if you look at the mayors of Andalusia, they are on their way to becoming a stronghold of the PP. The face of socialist municipalism, the incombustible Abel Caballero resists without ruffled hair in Vigo with 19 of the 27 councilors. But he has his persecutors: in Badalona, ​​the controversial candidate of the PP, Xavier García Albiol, has only one less: 18 in another corporation of 27. The bleeding will foreseeably continue when the parties take stock of the councils, whose government is chosen based on the number of councillors.

In the parties to the left of the PSOE, total drama. Unidas Podemos does not achieve representation in the Madrid City Council and is left out of the Madrid Assembly and the Valencian Parliament. Neither Roberto Sotomayor nor the housing activist Alejandra Jacinto have exceeded the bar of 5% of votes in both institutions, and the result constitutes the biggest fiasco in that space since the irruption of Podemos in the European elections in 2014. That the Valencian vice president Héctor Illueca reached 5% of the votes was essential to reissue the Valencian Government. This is how the efforts were understood in the last days of the campaign of Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Iglesias to cover that candidacy. It couldn’t be either.

Mayors of change such as ‘Kichi’, in Cádiz, and Joan Ribó, in Valencia, will hand over the baton of command to the PP candidates on June 17, the first force in both municipalities, where they also join Vox. And in Barcelona Ada Colau is very close to repeating at the head of a tripartite, but 140 votes separated her from second position: she has been left behind Xavier Trias and Jaume Collboni, from the PSC and ERC, so far she has not given any sign nor to go to support the PSC candidate.

The only good news to the left of the PSOE is in Zamora, where the United Left candidate, Francisco Guarido, loses an absolute majority but can aspire to a third term if he agrees with the PSOE. And the continuity of the left is also guaranteed in Rivas Vaciamadrid, the largest council that governs the left in the region with a confluence from which Podemos excluded itself at the last minute.

In the chapter of extravagances, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, the atrocious candidate from Ourense and his carousel of scandals, becomes the candidate with the most votes in the city and could revalidate his pact with the PP.