The progressive bloc gained momentum on May 1 and …

With a massive demonstration for Labor Day in which for the first time in the recent history of Spanish democracy the Minister of Labor participated, the next leader of Podemos, Yolanda Diaz, the Spanish left has taken the impetus to try what almost all the polls have ruled out: an electoral result which allows to add enough seats to oust the president of the Community of Madrid from power, Isabel Diaz Ayuso (People’s Party). In Spain, it is forbidden to publish polls less than a week before the elections are held, so the last known date back to last Wednesday.

The overwhelming majority predicted a comfortable victory for the current president, who Even if I wouldn’t get the 69 needed to get the absolute majority, I would have no problem adding them up with Vox the formation of the far right which has grown steadily since it burst into the regional elections in the autonomous community of Andalusia in 2018. Currently, Vox is the third political force at the national level and in recent elections held so far, the regional elections of Catalonia, it has again experienced a sharp rise that has allowed it to enter for the first time in the legislative chamber of this community.

Vox is also present at the Assembly of the Community of Madrid and if in this case the surveys do not predict a growth as important as that which it is experiencing in the rest of Spain, it is due to the characteristics of the candidate for who he disputes the votes in the right space. Díaz Ayuso, with his aggressive language towards the left – his campaign slogan is ‘socialism or freedom’ – and his constant confrontation with Pedro Sanchez As a result of the management of the pandemic, where it systematically opposes any measure consisting in restricting hours or limiting the operation of bars and restaurants, it has become a brake on the far right not by fighting its paradigms, but by appropriating them.

Recently in a TV interview he had no problem saying, “If they call you a fascist, you are on the right side of history.” Although he aspires to rule on his own, no one doubts that if he needs Vox he will have no problem negotiating. In addition, has incorporated a new hitherto unprecedented element in Spanish politics: the exaltation of a Madrid localism in which it claims for the capital the status of an oasis of freedom which, according to its speech, is lacking in the rest of the Spanish territories. In a country where territorial tensions are still present, especially but not only in the Basque and Catalan communities, Madrid was until now an oasis sheltered from any regionalist temptation. Díaz Ayuso has incorporated the claim of heightened centrality and apparently this is also giving him results.

The current president came to power two years ago in an election in which the most voted candidate was the Socialist Angel Gabilondo, but the three on the right -Partido Popular, Ciudadanos and Vox- added more seats than the three on the left -PSOE, Más Madrid and Unidas Podemos. No one was betting at the time on a young leader, poorly trained and whose political career had been limited to keeping a Twitter account in which she spoke on behalf of the mascot of the former president of the Community. from Madrid, Hope Aguirre, under whose mandate the People’s Party in the capital had become the center of a corruption plot.

However, Díaz Ayuso made an unexpected move. He hired as an advisor Miguel Angel Rodriguez, communications director of José Maria Aznar when he made the jump, in the mid-1990s, from the presidency of the autonomous community of Castilla y León to head of government.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, known as MAR in Madrid circles and who had a controversial stint through the Secretary of State for Communication, had been out of the spotlight for years, but once again revealed himself as a shrewd right-wing strategist. She succeeded in uplifting Díaz Ayuso as a liberal populist leader, often with Trumpist-inspired speeches and slogans that permeated much of a population affected by the pandemic and the economic crisis it triggered. As part of his speech on freedom, he went to Catalonia on several occasions to confront the separatists, received Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela when Pedro Sánchez refused to do so and became a champion of freedom in the face of restrictive measures put in place by the government to fight the pandemic.

His career is full of controversial phrases, such as when he claimed traffic jams as a trademark of Madrid or proposed, amid the debate over extending the law on termination of pregnancy, that the unborn child be considered. as part of the family unit by reserving a place at school or considering a large family In his desire for privatization, he made Madrid the community with the most arrangements with private health, and as a current practice , he ceded public land for the construction of private schools.

Sacking her out of the government of the Community of Madrid has become an obsession for the left. But if he wins, as the polls predict, he will also become a headache for his party’s national leader, Pablo Casado. There are those who already see it as an alternative if Casado fails in his next attempt to reach La Moncloa.