Moreno aspires to govern alone, but no one except Vox is open to his investiture

Juanma Moreno aims to govern alone, without having Vox as a partner within the Andalusian government in the next legislature.

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This is a consistent option with what the acting president of the Junta has said throughout the campaign regarding a possible pact with the ultranationalists.

A possibility he has repeatedly acknowledged he did not want. He called it the mess. The mess that would paralyze the Andalusian Administration for months and force him to depend on the whim of “a gentleman from Madrid” – namely, a certain Santiago Abascal, a personal friend in the past – who would decide based on his interests and not those of Andalusia. This was his campaign argument.

However, and in all fairness, on some occasions – it was at a breakfast in the salons of the Alfonso XIII hotel, where he was heard by an audience that probably would not feel uncomfortable with an alliance that adds up PP and Vox – he also warned that he would manage the verdict of the Andalusians, and the unappealable verdict of Sunday night from those who went to vote is a right-wing government. Between the Popular Party and Vox, they sum just over 55% of the votes (one percentage point less than in 2022).

But, moreover, Moreno has no other option. Because, if it was not clear in these fifteen days of campaigning, the left-wing groups yesterday again ruled out any possibility of abstention that would allow the PP candidate to access the presidency without submitting to the unconditional affirmative vote of the ultranationalists.

Vox, for its part, does not close the possibility of support from outside the executive, although it is hard to believe that this is their real position. Vox is a party obsessed with not being or not appearing institutional – the “fight for the seats,” as they call it – but it is not very convincing that this is the goal they truly pursue.

Among other reasons, because that combination was already tried almost eight years ago, in 2018, in Moreno’s first government, when he had Citizens as a partner and the external support of Vox, which surprisingly emerged in those elections with 12 deputies in Parliament.

Everything was very complicated. The ultranationalists blocked the budgets and some decisive laws by direct order of General Abascal so that, finally, Moreno, fed up, decided to call elections at the right moment. In 2022 he obtained an absolute majority and relegated Vox to the corner to think in the Andalusian Parliament.

Now it is Santiago Abascal’s moment of revenge. It is hard to imagine that he will allow Manuel Gavira, the leader of Vox in Andalusia, to close an agreement that does not have Moreno well tied up, even though the president of the Junta only needs two more votes for the necessary majority. They could be the two most expensive deputies in history, and the price will bear the stamp of Vox’s electoral hit, the national priority.

Moreno has rejected the segregationism that Vox defends, but given the results, he has been very convincing in some provinces where immigration has a greater presence. See Almería, where Vox was the second force – one and a half points more than the PSOE. This result is new in Andalusian regional elections.

Let’s add a not minor detail: Alhaurín el Grande, a municipality in Málaga where Juanma Moreno, born in Barcelona, spent his childhood and adolescence. It was his emblem because in 2022 he obtained the best result of the elections in all of Andalusia with almost 60% of the votes counted. This time the vote for his candidacy has remained at a meritorious 54.5% and the second force was… Vox. In 2022 it was the PSOE.

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And the socialists, what about them? Yesterday they gathered their executive at the party headquarters on Sant Vicente street in Seville and, according to the account given after the meeting by the campaign coordinator, Fernando López, there is no declared war.

Preventively, Montero, early in the morning before the meeting, announced that as soon as the Andalusian Parliament is constituted, she will resign her seat in Congress and will take the reins of the first opposition group. Goodbye Madrid, for now. The former vice president of the Government did not want to confirm, in the interview she gave to Àngels Barceló on Ser, whether she would be the candidate again in Andalusian elections. She said that when she reaches that bridge, she will cross it.

However, the most relevant thing is the declaration of intentions regarding the party’s turbulent internal life. It is evident that this result puts many mayors and aspiring mayors on alert ahead of the May 2027 municipal elections. The PSOE’s local power has gradually diminished and today controls a negligible part of the institutional power it had just eight years ago. Only the Seville deputation remains in the hands of the socialists.

Montero takes command, despite the electoral disaster on Sunday night, when they fell even further below their worst result in 2022. Her purpose, López explained, is to reorganize the party and rearm it as the left’s alternative to Juanma Moreno’s government.

In theory, at least in this executive meeting no one disputed it, probably because opening a new leadership battle among Andalusian socialists now could lead to an even worse disaster in next May’s municipal elections. It is time to get to work.

And one detail must not be forgotten: María Jesús Montero has left the Government, but she has not relinquished the PSOE’s vice-secretariat general. She has command in place, in Andalusia and in the State capital. She already said it in her presentation as a candidate for the presidency of the Junta: she is a very powerful woman. Some laughed.

And after all this, there remains, moreover, how the electoral results of Sunday night translate on the other side of Despeñaperros, in Madrid.

Feijóo, who gathered the national board, applauded Moreno for his victory which fell short, made the best of a bad situation after the failure of the Andalusian route to rein in Vox, and the war continues. The message was that, with the electoral cycle covered – four elections, four victories and, so far, two agreements with Vox – it is time to speed up towards the general elections with the slogan that the citizens are asking for a change of tenant in Moncloa. It is curious that in his last campaign rally in Málaga, those were Juanma Moreno’s words: if you want change, vote for the PP. And there was change, at least in the conditions in which he will govern.

Sánchez, undeterred by the accumulated defeats, clung to the fact that the right lost one percentage point in Andalusia, despite this loss not benefiting the PSOE, but rather the other forces further to the left, particularly the cupaires of Adelante Andalucía. As said, the president will continue until 2027.

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