The advance in Andalusia catches Vox without a candidate and the left without sealing its coalition

With the electoral race launched, the political parties of Andalusia are already oiling their machinery towards 19-J. An appointment with the polls in which the current president and vice president of the Board, Juanma Moreno and Juan Marín, will repeat as headliners of PP and Ciudadanos, respectively. The renewal will come in the opposition, since neither PSOE nor Vox nor United We Can have the same candidate as in 2018. The Socialists trust the former mayor of Seville Juan Espadas, the extreme right is reluctant to confirm the deputy Macarena Olona and the confluence of the left has not even sealed its alliance yet, in which Andalusia will not be Adelante.

The parties that govern the Board since the beginning of 2019 trust their respective leaders and their degree of knowledge to once again submit to the scrutiny of the citizens. Moreno was re-elected president of the Andalusian PP last November in what was interpreted as the first step towards an electoral advance in the autonomous community. For its part, Ciudadanos convened in December express primaries whose calendar was censored by critical sectors as it was held on a festive bridge and with very tight deadlines to formalize the candidacies. Marín won the victory thanks to 58% of the support.

In any case, the PSOE was the first to name and surname its candidate for the Presidency of the Board. In June 2021, a year before the date on which the elections will be held, Juan Espadas won the internal primaries by 17 percentage points over Susana Díaz, who had been the leader of the socialist federation since 2013 and had been the candidate in the last two electoral appointments. The former mayor of Seville, a position he abandoned in January of this year, has been seeking a platform to confront Moreno ever since, but has not yet taken off in notoriety or in the polls. Since December he has been a senator, like Diaz herself.

Difficulties on the left

After the surprise of its irruption in Andalusia in 2018, in what was the advance to obtain national representation and in other territories, Vox faces its second autonomous electoral appointment with even better expectations. The polls grant him constant growth and the key to governability in a role similar to the one played by Cs in this legislature. And all this despite the fact that the formation of Santiago Abascal has not yet officially chosen its candidate for the Presidency of the Board. All eyes point to Macarena Olona, ​​a deputy in Congress for Granada and one of the best-known faces of the party. But other options are not ruled out either.

The advancement of the elections catches with the changed foot the space to the left of the PSOE, which has spent months trying to seal an electoral coalition that avoids fragmentation. Podemos, Izquierda Unida, Alianza Verde, Más País, Equo and the Andalusian People’s Initiative continue to negotiate an alliance that could be called ‘For Andalusia’, but precisely the identity of the candidate is one of the obstacles. Podemos and IU seek to locate an applicant from their ranks, while Más País asks for an independent figure of consensus. The formation that will not join is Adelante Andalucía, led by Teresa Rodríguez, who will present herself independently with the former Podemos parliamentarian as a candidate.