In the electoral battle on May 28, the PSOE will put two tactics to the test. On the one hand, the defensive, concentrated mainly in the autonomous communities. The objective of Pedro Sánchez’s party is to try to preserve the nine regional executives that he leads given the improbability that he can conquer any of the other three places at stake: Madrid, Murcia and Cantabria, where he co-governs with Miguel Ángel Revilla’s party.
At the same time, it will deploy an offensive strategy focused on the big cities since, of the six municipalities in Spain with more than 500,000 inhabitants, only Seville has a socialist mayor, Antonio Muñoz. Although the official message is that they are going all out, the realistic aspiration in this field -in addition to retaining the Mayor’s Office of the Andalusian capital- is to win in Barcelona and remain as the first force of the left in Valencia, both locations in which they are now the minority partner of the coalitions that are in charge of each city council.
For this close local contest, the PSOE has chosen to use the quarry with candidates who had already appeared as the head of the list in previous electoral appointments and who have become politically seasoned in recent years within governments headed by other acronyms or as spokespersons for the opposition. The only exception to this pattern is Madrid, where a minister has been chosen, Reyes Maroto, who lacks experience in the municipal sphere.
The recovery of the Mayor of Barcelona is one of the options that Ferraz sees as more viable despite the fact that the Sigma Dos survey for EL MUNDO reveals that Junts’ decision to place former councilor Xavier Trias as a candidate places him as a rival weight and even possible winner. In this context, the socialist Jaume Collboni announced his resignation as first deputy mayor to oppose Ada Colau (Barcelona en Comú) from outside the Executive that they have shared for almost four years -although without breaking the coalition- in what will be his third attempt to seize the baton.
Bet with candidates with local experience, except in Madrid
A similar political coexistence is the one that Sandra Gómez, vice mayor and PSOE candidate for the second time, maintains in Valencia with Joan Ribó, the city’s first mayor representing Compromís. In the environment of the current number two of the City Council of the capital of Turia, they rule out that she is also going to resign from her institutional position to focus on a campaign in which she hopes to advance her government partner in votes, so she will combine both tasks .
In the case of the councilor of Seville, it will be the first time that he submits to the verdict of the polls as head of the list, since he succeeded Juan Espadas after his resignation in December 2021 to be a candidate for the Presidency of Andalusia. In any case, Antonio Muñoz is not a stranger in the Seville city either, since since 2011 he had been a councilor first and deputy mayor later.
Barcelona is one of the options that Ferraz sees as more viable
For the Zaragoza City Council, it will be the current spokesperson for the PSOE in the municipal plenary session, Lola Ranera, who tries to occupy the chair that Jorge Azcón, of the PP, is going to leave vacant, to be a candidate for the Presidency of Aragon. Although in his case it will be the first time that he leads the electoral list of the fifth most populous town in Spain, he has already held prominent positions in previous calls and was councilor for Urbanism, Mobility, Environment and Culture in the tripartite that Pedro Santiesteve -Zaragoza in Common- formed between 2015 and 2019 with the socialists and the CHA.
For his part, Daniel Pérez will repeat as a candidate for Mayor of Malaga after four years leading the opposition. The national leadership of the party once again leaves the attempt to recover a square that has resisted it since 1995 and that would imply the eviction of the popular Francisco de la Torre, who has been in office since 2000 and who he will still run for a new term.
The only inexperienced in local conflicts who will participate in the battle of the big cities on behalf of the PSOE is the Minister of Industry. With the appointment of Reyes Maroto, the party leadership has preferred to resort to a formula with which, however, it has been collecting increasingly resounding failures since its last councilor in the capital’s City Council, Juan Barranco, left in 1989.
On May 28, the Socialists will try to defend their continuity at the head of nine autonomous governments -Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragon, Navarra, Extremadura, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Asturias and La Rioja- and the municipalities of 22 of the 52 provincial capitals. The effectiveness of your offensive strategy will be tested in the battle of the big cities.
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