The Community of Madrid votes in an environment …

After one of the most strained campaigns in memory, which included letters containing intimidating messages directed at various politicians, the Community of Madrid celebrates this Tuesday elections to elect the authorities of this rich Spanish autonomous region ruled for 26 years by the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

These elections are proposed as a thermometer of the direction that Spanish politics can take, with the objective of the left to stop the far right and of the conservative side to mark the beginning of the end of the national government chaired by the socialist Pedro Sánchez.

Amidst great polarization, the PP, the right-wing liberal Ciudadanos and far-right Vox, as well as the socialist PSOE, which leads the national government coalition, the left-wing alliance United We Can and a split of this last, will compete., More Madrid.

More than 5.1 million voters in the region of Madrid, which includes the capital, elect 136 lawmakers, four more than those who currently make up the Assembly, due to population growth, the absolute majority will therefore be located in 69 seats, and not in 67, as before.

Latest polls predict a comfortable re-election of conservative Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the community since 2019, albeit without an absolute majorityTherefore, to continue in power, he might need the support of Vox’s far right, whose candidate is Rocío Monasterio.

However, theThe opposition is also playing its cards with three forces: PSOE candidate Ángel Gabilondo, Pablo Iglesias of United We Can, who resigned from the vice-presidency of the Spanish government to fight, and the surprise, Mónica García, doctor, feminist and representative of Más Madrid. Plus Madrid is a split from Podemos led by MP Iñigo Errejón, and his entry into the fray seriously threatens the weight in the region that the PSOE has had so far over Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

The elections take place after a fierce campaign of unprecedented hostility, the turning point of which was the sending of bullets in letters addressed to Iglesias, the socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, president of the government between 2004 and 2011, and the ‘current Interior. Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. There were also incidents with detainees in a far-right act, whose election propaganda against immigrants ended up in the courts, and mutual complaints about the use of public resources to demand the vote or influence the polls. .

The tension of the campaign blocked any possibility of debate and polarized it to the point that each political sector sought to define the agenda on the basis of the antinomies of “democracy-fascism” on the left and “freedom or communism” on the right. The elections will decide the direction of the region of 6.6 million people, whose GDP per capita is the highest in Spain, but which has also accumulated the highest number of infections and deaths since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Elections were due to take place within two years, but were called soon after Díaz Ayuso, 42, broke his coalition with Ciudadanos in hopes of building on sympathies won by his opposition to the restrictions recommended by the polling stations . Central government of Sánchez.

“The problem in Madrid is Pedro Sánchez. He was trying to force us to close Madrid, they demanded a state of the art alarm, bogus, and no health reports, and I said ‘not at all “I am not going to close Madrid, because there is no reason, because I do not want to and because nobody blackmailed me,” said the leader in recent statements.

The elections are crucial for the future of Spain’s political center, a space that could remain empty if Ciudadanos, as polls predict, does not reach the five percent needed to enter the regional parliament and become a key hinge for any government . Beaten after challenging the PP conservatives for the hegemony of the Spanish right barely two years ago, Ciudadanos is playing one of his last cards in Madrid.

Last Wednesday, the last day before the electoral ban banned publication of polls, the figures kept the PP first with around 41% of the vote, followed by the PSOE with 21, then by Más Madrid with 16, Vox between 9 and the 10, United We can with 7 and citizens with 4.

Ayuso insists he prefers not to depend on anyone to rule, but on different occasions he has stated that agreeing with Vox “would not be the end of the world”, a phrase with which he shows that it does not rule out skipping the limit with respect for the extreme right that the conservatives apply in other countries. For two years, Vox supported the autonomous government, but this commitment could never be formalized because Ciudadanos opposed the presence of the ultra party in the photo.

The Conservatives have been ruled in Madrid for more than two decades, where just over five million voters are called up at 1 p.m. an atypical vote, on a weekday when the elections take place on a normal Sunday in Spain and between biosecurity measures due to the covid-19 pandemic.