Newsletter: If the polls are right, Casado will finally have to decide if he can govern with Vox and what that means for the PP at the national level.
Bonus: podcast here with Rupert Cocke on Castilla y León elections and Vox vs. PP
While the world's athletes compete in the Winter Games in China and the West looks worriedly towards Ukraine and the build up of Russian troops on the border, now with an open threat from the President of the United States to "put an end" to the German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline should Putin invade, Spanish politicians are watching the regional elections in Castilla y León this Sunday.
I say the politicians because today we have discovered that there are large numbers of people in Castilla y León who are not. According to the pre-election CIS survey, 60% of them are not really paying attention to election campaign news and 40% of them are even doubting over whether or not to go and vote. With all the effort and shouting the parties put in to the show in town squares and on Twitter.
The CIS is the only poll that is not forecasting a right-wing majority, which in Castilla y León is 41 out of 81 seats in the regional parliament, for the PP-Vox combination. According to all the rest, even the El País poll, the union of Mañueco (PP) and García-Gallardo (Vox) would be enough to form a government, as long as the parties could agree enough and as long as Casado (PP) could get over any ideological or political problems he might have about governing with Vox, which only a few days ago was hosting a meeting in Madrid for Europe's alt-right parties to denounce a globalist and European bureaucratic plot, the invasion of European and an attack on its sovereign nations.
It would be the first time Vox had entered regional government in Spain and Casado will no longer be able to avoid answering this question.
Within the ideological shouting, Vox, at least superficially, from the outside, seems to have raised its voice more effectively than the PP in this campaign, at least if we look at the images each party publishes to best demonstrate its power to get the vote out. While Casado's crew declares victory with photos of sports halls kind of full of people sitting down, Abascal's crew, dressed in their rural winter collection, constantly upload videos and photos of squares full of people all round Castilla. They want it more and the PP doesn't have time now to get its energy back before the vote. We shall see on Sunday if the propaganda tallies with the polls and the results, or if they have turned the rhetorical volume up too much again.
It looks bad for Casado. If things continue like this on the Spanish right, perhaps sooner rather than later we will see Vox start to overtake the PP in some corner of the country.
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