Almost eight years ago, in December 2003, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero came to Lanzarote for the first time, just before facing his first electoral campaign to aspire to the presidency of the Government of Spain. Now, two ...
Almost eight years ago, in December 2003, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero came to Lanzarote for the first time, just before facing his first electoral campaign to aspire to the presidency of the Government of Spain. Now, two legislatures later, the new socialist candidate, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, has also visited the island of volcanoes, although the two trips have little to do with each other.
Zapatero came on vacation, to "recharge his batteries" before the campaign. Rubalcaba arrived in Lanzarote in the middle of a pre-election marathon, which last weekend took him to several islands in the archipelago. However, there is another point in common between the two trips: just as is happening to Rubalcaba now, Zapatero did not expect to win those elections either.
Shortly after those 2004 elections, the current president of Spain returned to this island, again for a rest, as if Lanzarote had become a kind of talisman. But this time, for history to repeat itself and there to be an electoral surprise, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba would need much more than an amulet.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero leaves a country with almost five million unemployed and a last legislature full of ups and downs, and no party can withstand that. Not even Rubalcaba's attempt to distance himself from Zapatero, after having been part of his government, will prevent the disaster to which the socialists seem doomed in these elections, as already happened in the past municipal elections.
Therefore, while the PSOE is trying to fight to save at least the furniture in these elections, the real battle in the archipelago will be between the Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party. José Manuel Soria's party is playing with a clear advantage, thanks to the national pull that the party is going to have, hand in hand with a protest vote against the PSOE and the need for a change to face the crisis.
In that context, CC knows that it will have to make an important effort to achieve its representation in Madrid. And it is that, apparently, the decline of the Socialist Party will benefit the Popular Party, which already in the past elections of May managed to become the most voted force in the Canary Islands. In addition, if the forecasts of the polls are confirmed, and Mariano Rajoy manages to win by an absolute majority, the nationalists could lose their role as a "hinge", which in recent legislatures has allowed them to maintain a direct negotiation with the central government, to which they have offered punctual support in decisive moments, both during the socialist government and in the previous ones of the PP without an absolute majority.
But apart from the elections to the Congress, in Lanzarote the pools are focused on the votes to the Senate, where the electoral appointment takes on new nuances. And it is that there the president of the country is not elected, but the person who will represent the island in the Upper House. And precisely for that reason, the vote of the citizens can sometimes go beyond the acronyms of the party.
Aware of this, from the Canarian Coalition they tried to find a strong bet for these elections, based on the results of the last electoral appointment. And that is why the candidacy of Pedro San Ginés will be a litmus test for the current president of the Cabildo, who until the last minute had serious doubts about accepting this challenge. His main rival, without a doubt, will be the PP candidate, Óscar Luzardo. A candidate practically unknown in politics, but who they present as a new value of the PP on the island.
In this duel between the pull of the Popular Party for these elections and the bet of the Canarian Coalition, the PSOE will also try to enter with a bet on the experience of Orlando Suárez, historically linked to the party but also to the trade union movements. And it is precisely that pull that the socialists could be looking for, focusing also more on the figure of the candidate, to try to climb positions in the difficult appointment with the polls that they have ahead.
However, Orlando Suárez is also the one who has the least to lose in this electoral contest, since the party is aware of the difficulty of winning in these elections, and that the challenge is focused between the candidates of CC and the PP. Now, with the campaign just started in the early hours of this Friday, it will be necessary to see if the parties manage to mobilize the citizens, increasingly disenchanted with politics, and also how these two weeks are faced by both parties, which are government partners in the Cabildo.
Pedro San Ginés, president of the Cabildo and candidate. Astrid Pérez, vice president and leader of the PP on the island. Without a doubt, a complicated situation to deal with during the next few days, and also from 20-N when, to a certain extent, both will be measured again at the polls.
