Ángel Collado
Beyond the direct struggle for power between the PP and the left-wing parties, the future of the main populist movements in Spain is also at stake in the regional elections in Madrid. Both extremes of the parliamentary arc, Podemos and Vox, have sought to clash in the campaign and are feeding off each other in their particular fight to avoid coming last in the final distribution of seats.
Pablo Iglesias is betting his political career on saving his dwindling forces in the Community of Madrid, while Santiago Abascal is rehearsing the message of Le Pen for citizen security and against immigration in order to maintain his reduced electoral share in the face of the push from the Popular Party’s candidate, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
The leader of Podemos put himself at the head of the party’s regional candidacy in Madrid to guarantee its parliamentary survival, to surpass the five percent of the votes required by law to enter the distribution of seats, but also to bring together the entire extreme left.
No sooner had he announced his descent into regional politics than he reaped his first defeat: the Madrid split from Podemos, headed by his friend Íñigo Errejón (Mas Madrid), confirmed that it was maintaining its own candidacy, that of Mónica García. This failure was later reinforced by the polls, which showed that the breakaway party had double the percentage of votes of the podemites.
Despite the prominence achieved in the campaign and in the media by both extremes, the most populist messages have still not caught on in Madrid, especially Iglesias’. Only two years ago Podemos was left with 5.6 per cent of the vote, on the verge of disappearing from the assembly. Errejón’s candidacy, less extremist and with a friendlier face, got 14 per cent. It is now on the rise and already disputing space with the PSOE.
Barring an unexpected twist and turn of results and last-minute pacts in favour of the left-wing bloc, Iglesias’s emergence in regional politics looks like a farewell. If it was difficult to expect him to settle for being the last in line in a regional assembly, the news about his negotiations to make the leap to the media confirms that he is preparing his retirement from the front line.
Iglesias’ career would then be very successful for his personal life and wealth, but very short as a leader, unifier or heir to 15-M, a movement later diluted in Podemos that led him to dispute the supremacy of the left against Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE. Five years ago it came within 1.5 points of the socialists’ share of the vote in the general election.
The history of Vox in Madrid has certain parallels with that of Podemos. Always below their expectations in the polls, Santiago Abascal’s party reached 15 per cent of the vote in the 2019 legislative elections, but in the Madrid regional elections they were the penultimate party (only ahead of the podemitas) with 8.8 per cent of the vote and 12 seats in an assembly of 129 deputies. These are the results they are now defending in order not to lose ground against the phenomenon of the reunification of the centre-right vote led by Díaz Ayuso.
Instead of campaigning as in previous elections against “the cowardly right wing” with the aim of liquidating the PP, Abascal’s party (led by Rocío Monasterio) has preferred to defend its share of the electorate with very limited lepenist messages: citizen security, rejection of immigration and basic anti-communism, taking advantage of the presence of Iglesias. In the best case scenario for Vox, its future in Madrid will be to serve as a complement to a relative majority for Díaz Ayuso, and always from outside power, not as Sánchez is doing with Podemos. The extremes feed back on each other but they go backwards, at least in Madrid.
