In a Europe that looks to the right, almost all large cities are strongholds of the left. In the last elections, the UK plebiscated Boris Johnson, but the richest neighborhoods in London voted for red Jeremy Corbin, and the Labor mayor: Sadiq Khan, son of a Pakistani immigrant who drove buses. In Germany, the Social Democrats are on their way to an all-time low but govern both Munich, a red island in the conservative sea of Bavaria, and Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin: in the capital they are allied with the Greens and with the post-communists of Linke, and in the next elections they will nominate the rising star of the party, the Minister for the Family Franziska Giffey. The French socialists are in pieces, but they still control Paris thanks to Anne Hidalgo, who is actually called Ana Mara and was born in San Fernando, Andalusia. Even in nationalist and populist Eastern Europe, the big cities are citadels of the opposition: the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, a defender of minority rights; and the mayor of Gdansk, Paweł Adamowicz, paid for his commitment with his life. All this makes what happened yesterday in Madrid, where the president of the Comunidad (the capital a sort of city-state) was voted even more interesting. The popular party has almost doubled its seats and votes, clearly detaching the PSOE (which leads the national government). And it did so by recovering the support of the center – thanks to the extinction of Ciudadanos -; not moving to the center. In fact now they will make a pact with the extremists of Vox.
It remains to be seen why Madrid is in contrast with the rest of Europe, and also with its own history. The capital was the last city to surrender to Franco in 1939, and the first to rise up against the Caudillo, in 1956.. Of course, the regime’s bureaucracy lived here. But the working-class and popular districts have long been oriented towards communists and socialists. Everything changed when Jos Mara Aznar from Madrid came to the government of the country, putting an end to the long reign of Felipe Gonzlez, the Sevillian son of a Cantabrian cattle breeder. Aznar, with its policy of tax breaks and centralization, has made Madrid the economic heart of Spain; the suicide of Catalonia did the rest. The Madrid right has ideological harshness – in the richest neighborhood, Salamanca, the PP and Vox exceed 70 per cent -, but it professes to be faithful to the cult of freedom, both in economics and in the field of rights: incentives for schools and private healthcare , openness to Iberian immigration – a touch of Vox founder Santiago Abascal, who would like to replace Arabs and Africans with anti-Castro Cubans and Venezuelans who are Maduro’s opponents – and now bars, restaurants and discos are open despite the pandemic. You may not like it; but the voters have rewarded this line. The socialists failed to intercept the votes of the center; and the descent into the field of Pablo Iglesias did not prevent Unidas Podemos from falling. Now the national government of the left is weaker. And the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, has a stronger internal rival: the outgoing and returning president Isabel Daz Ayuso.
May 4, 2021 (change May 4, 2021 | 20:46)
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