All election campaigns tend to deviate from their initial trajectory. The PP had designed a white, friendly campaign. The PSOE a red campaign, shouting long live healthcare and public services in general. But everything changed at 11 a.m. on Thursday, 150 kilometers off the coast of Huelva when two Civil Guard agents died in an accidental collision during an anti-drug operation. As expected, these deaths have become a central issue in the campaign.
The “petaqueo” – the transport of fuel to supply the drug-running speedboats with which some young and not-so-young people make a living in the coastal areas of Andalusia – has entered the campaign argument.
The president of the Junta and candidate for his third re-election blames the central government for the proliferation of drug trafficking on the coasts of his community. “We are – he said yesterday at a rally held in Málaga – the southern border of Europe and we have always had problems with drug trafficking, but it is true that before they were seen in the province of Cádiz and now they are seen everywhere, from Pulpí [Almería] to Ayamonte [Huelva], along 900 kilometers of coast, the drug traffickers roam freely due to the lack of action by the Government of Spain.”
Moreno was participating in the central rally of the electoral campaign, where for the first time he shared the platform with the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo who, during this past week, and will do so again next week, has covered his own itinerary of rallies across Andalusia, parallel to Moreno’s campaign.
This event in Málaga, where the party estimates it managed to gather about six thousand people from the eight Andalusian provinces, began with a minute of silence in memory of the two agents. Shortly after, the leader of the Popular Party took the floor, lamenting that no minister attended yesterday’s funeral at the Church of the Conception in Huelva nor assumed “responsibilities” for this accident which Feijóo links to the lack of resources that police and Civil Guard unions and associations have been denouncing for years. In fact, these organizations consider that the collision of the two boats was not accidental and that the collision was the result of a hostile maneuver by the alleged drug-running speedboat.
The Carranque pavilion in Málaga held a minute of silence for the two agents
Feijóo explained in his speech that on Saturday afternoon he had a meeting with Civil Guard wives, including the wives of agents injured in the Barbate collision in February 2024, in which two agents also died and others were injured.
For his part, Moreno, in his turn, proposed to Feijóo a modification of the Penal Code so that all links in the drug trafficking chain receive the same penalties, from those engaged in the so-called “petaqueo” to those at the top of the organization.
Montero asks “why is PP corruption permanently associated with drug trafficking”
For her part, the PSOE candidate who does not dispel the dark clouds, María Jesús Montero, intensified her clash against Juanma Moreno Bonilla yesterday over the Huelva incident. “PP corruption is always associated with drug trafficking,” denounced the socialist candidate at the rally she led with Pedro Sánchez in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz), in a Campo de Gibraltar heavily affected by drug trafficking.
The rally began with a minute of silence, but immediately after Montero attacked Juanma Moreno and his “leader,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “I want to denounce that some always try to cash in on tragedies,” she warned. And she criticized Moreno Bonilla’s “political opportunism,” “using misfortune to tell lies and spread insecurity” among the people.
Montero argued that since Sánchez arrived at Moncloa, there are 3,500 more Civil Guards and police in Andalusia than under Mariano Rajoy, whom she accused of cutting 1,500 personnel in this community.
And she urged Moreno to “assume his own responsibility,” instead of always blaming the central government, because she warned that the Junta “does not exercise autonomous competences in the fight against drugs.”
Specifically, in territorial planning, the PSOE candidate accused the Junta of not acting against the so-called Villa Narco, an area of this town in Cádiz “where drug traffickers roam freely with illegal homes they have turned into a refuge to try to escape justice.”
Montero warned Juanma Moreno that “if he is so concerned about drug trafficking, he would do well to explain why corruption in his party is permanently associated with drug trafficking.”
And she brought up the cases of alleged corruption linked to drug trafficking that taint the Diputación of Almería and the mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz. “PP corruption is always next to drug trafficking,” she denounced.
She also did not forget the old photos of Feijóo on a yacht with the Galician trafficker Marcial Dorado. “Moreno Bonilla would do well to tell Feijóo, his leader, that it is very inappropriate to spend vacations and outings with a drug trafficker, putting on cream,” she jabbed.
Pedro Sánchez, for his part, conveyed his “sorrow, affection, and solidarity” to the families of the deceased Civil Guards, and also the “deep recognition” to the agents “who risk their lives to guarantee the security and well-being of citizens.”
The head of the Executive defended the management of the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska – again targeted by PP and Vox – “to tackle drug trafficking” with a reinforcement of the State security forces and bodies.
Be that as it may, the death of these agents has altered the campaign script just three days before today’s second debate on public television, this time on Canal Sur. The first did not go very well for Moreno, facing reproaches from opposition groups for the poor functioning of public services in Andalusia. But now the PP has found an argument to at least question that message on which Montero has focused her electoral campaign. What is more relevant in public services than security?
The Popular Party reaches mid-campaign without having secured a single-party government
We will see what this new turn yields. The truth is that the Popular Party entered yesterday the second and last week of the Andalusian campaign still uncertain whether it will manage to renew the absolute majority with which it has governed this legislature. The candidate for re-election, Juanma Moreno, insists at all his electoral events on asking party members to convince as many people as possible to go vote next Sunday. The polls are clearly favorable to Moreno but none guarantee him the absolute majority he needs if he does not want to disappoint his own expectations and, more importantly, have to form a government dependent on Vox.
Moreno already governed in 2018 with the external support of the ultranationalist party – their votes were decisive in taking the presidency of the Junta from Susana Díaz, who had won the elections – and it was a disaster that ended with the early dissolution of the legislature and the calling of elections.
The PP candidate does not want to repeat the adventure and, faced with the evidence that none of the left-wing parties will support him – Montero has already made it clear that whatever the result she will not help him – he needs to avoid Vox’s embrace.
Núñez Feijóo asks Andalusians for a message to Europe: an unusual absolute majority
Yesterday Feijóo reflected on this possible scenario and reminded those listening to him at the Carranque sports center in Málaga that there are no longer absolute majorities in Europe and that Andalusia has the opportunity to send precisely a message to Europe with the third absolute majority – the PP in its campaign never uses these two words, they call it a “stability majority” – of Moreno Bonilla. “Political fragmentation is destroying harmony,” suggested Feijóo who, throughout the electoral cycle ending in Andalusia, always has in mind the next political stop: the general elections.
