Madrid elections: political polarization and leadership crisis

You could see it coming. Isabel Díaz Ayuso swept the elections on Tuesday May 4 and ratified her position as president of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. The candidate of the People’s Party (PP) doubled its performance from two years ago and he was on the verge of an absolute majority in the Madrid Assembly, which will allow him to rule quietly and quietly for the next two years.

But beyond that, what does this choice leave?

1) National Direction of Díaz Ayuso. The president of the Community of Madrid positions himself as the leader of the opposition to the national government led by Pedro Sánchez (PSOE). The ratification in the Madrid polls added to the unpopularity of Pablo Casado (leader of the PP) made Ayuso the main sword of the Spanish right.

2) Precise adviser, precise campaign. Miguel Angel Rodríguez, better known as MAR, is the shadow of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the creator of success. You are not new to this area. He was Secretary of State for Communication to the President José Maria Aznar and he was even a spokesperson for the national government. He accompanied Ayuso in the 2019 campaign and since then he has become his right-hand man, his henchman and his strategist for his government.

Those who know him (colleagues and opponents) say that he is a “number one” and awarded with the successful definition of the campaign strategy. As soon as the decision of Pablo Iglesias (head of Podemos) to give up the vice-presidency of the national government to compete in Madrid was known, MAR chose the enemy and targeted him precisely by drawing the cleavage. “Communism or freedom” with which Ayuso has positioned its message in defense of openings in the midst of a pandemic, enjoying overwhelming support from the productive, commercial, hotel and tourism sectors of Madrid.

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1) The Churches factor. The decision of Pablo Iglesias to go to Madrid to compete for the municipal presidency had two effects for the benefit of the PP candidate.

On the one hand, he eliminated any possibility of uniting the left factions who kept their break at 3 (PSOE, Podemos and Más Madrid).

On the other hand, he deepened the polarization of the electorate and concentrated the right-wing vote in the figure of Ayuso to the detriment of the far right (VOX). Conservative and traditional sectors as well as those in the center joined the figure with the ability to guarantee a victory that nullifies any chance of the left, personalized in the figure of Iglesias.

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2) A polarization scenario that leaves no room for central spaces. Proof of this is the terrible performance of Ciudadanos (Cs), a party born in Barcelona in 2006 which managed to sneak into national politics as an alternative to the historic two-party PSOE-PP and which surprised the world by winning the Catalan elections in 2017..

In Madrid 2019, Cs forced the PP to co-govern and since then he has failed to adapt to the evolution of public opinion which demanded consistency in its positions as the party alternated between various alliances across the peninsula and throughout the peninsula. The cost was paid on May 4 without even reaching the minimum percentage to put a deputy in the Madrid Assembly and was left out.

3) Opposition errors. Beyond the fragmentation of the Spanish left, a separate paragraph deserves the election of candidates for a city on the outside, flourishing, cultural, modern, alive.

The PSOE insisted on the candidacy of Angel Gavilondo, with a very good performance in 2019. But we know that in politics there is a determining factor: the context. And the context for 2021 is clearly different from that of 2019. Gavilondo is a man respected for his intellectuality and his career, but not very dynamic for a modern campaign in front of an audience that demands fluidity and simplicity in the face of a complex situation.

Más Madrid, the party led by Íñigo Errejón, presented Dr Mónica García as a candidate, who unsuccessfully opposed her speech on health to Ayuso’s message of freedom. However made a very good choice and he managed to position himself as the leader of the local opposition by beating his co-religionists on the left.

4) Lack of strong leadership in the midst of a crisis. Spain is not immune to the situation the world is going through following the pandemic. In the Iberian Peninsula, the unemployment rate (unemployment) reaches 16.13% while 2 in 10 Spaniards are poor, knowing that the poverty rate is built with households that are below 60% of the national median of income . In the case of children and young people, the figures are more worrying: 27.1% of those under 16 are poor.

In this context, the country is going through a period of weak leadership like never before. There are those who believe that there is the reason for a political scenario that it has lost its historic bipartisan essence.

There is no longer a PSOE-PP auction. There is also no Felipe González (PSOE), a Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE), an Aznar (PP), a Rajoy (PP).

Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) and Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) still do not compete in this league. Many here consider that they will never live up to these historic rulers and attribute their conquests to the brains of their great advisers. Just as MAR is Ayuso’s shadow, Iván Redondo is Sánchez’s right-hand man. Its chief of staff has a long career as a political consultant, even working for the PP.