Ayuso launches into the cultural war with the left in search of an absolute majority at the expense of Vox in May 2023 | Madrid

The willingness shown by the Government of the Community of Madrid to shield the Valley of the Fallen of the dictator Francisco Franco against the Democratic Memory Law is the latest example of Vox proposals that the Executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has ended up assuming. With the municipal and regional elections of May 2023 already on the horizon, and after absorbing Cs voters in 2021, the PP seeks to seduce enough far-right voters to achieve an absolute majority. This commitment does not only translate into Ayuso’s interventions, far from the moderation demanded by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and which have included not condemning the macho insults that the students of the Elías Ahúja residence hall launched at the beginning of the course against her neighbors from the Santa Mónica residence hall. Nor is it reduced to pointing out over and over again that Vox does not have the capacity to decide anything in the Assembly. There are specific decisions with which the PP achieves the support of Vox in determined votes at the same time that it appeals to its voters: protect the Cuelgamuros Valley; lower LGTBI laws by eliminating gender impact reports on works; reinforce the specialty of palliative care against the euthanasia law; or play around with a reduction in the number of deputies in the Assembly.

“I do all the work [a Rocío Monasterio, portavoz de Vox] since the legislature began”, Ayuso summarized in the first plenary session in November. “They are running out of speech,” he added, complaining that the far-right party never specifies, in his opinion, where it wants to cut political spending. And then he launched an accusation that is a torpedo on the waterline of the Vox electorate: “What you cannot do is blow and slurp at the same time. Or is he with one side, or with the other? [en referencia a la izquierda]”.

In this competition for voters, Ayuso has many competitive advantages. Being in the Government gives him an executive capacity with which he emphasizes that his partner does not decide anything alone: ​​”it is very easy to be from Vox, the great perfection, to do nothing and criticize everything.” Everything fits into his strategy of constant confrontation with the Spanish government, including many of Vox’s claims, which he naturally assumes as his own. And the licenses that she can afford to disqualify her partner are almost never replicated, despite the fact that it could be thought that Vox is precisely the one who has the upper hand in situations like the one we are experiencing now: the Budgets depend on their votes of 2023.

What is happening? There are decisions that are better understood together. In March, when he saw Vox’s support for one of his laws in jeopardy, Ayuso began winking at him: he announced a study commission on youth gang violence and an audit of subsidies. In May, and to celebrate her coronation as the president of the PP in Madrid, she appointed Rafael Núñez Huesca, the creator of the Vox brand and a firm believer in the need to wage the cultural battle against the left, as party strategist. . A month later, in June, he promoted the Minister of Education, Enrique Ossorio, to the post of vice president, with the double task of coordinating the Executive and the 2023 electoral program. And since then the PP has been rearming itself through a cycle of conventions of a markedly ideological nature, designed to wage that cultural battle against the left that distinguished Vox: in these forums, climate change is confronted (fighting it favors communism, Ayuso said a week ago) to the value of effort.

surveys

Politics are emotions, and also data. For weeks now, Ayuso’s team has been using surveys to try to make both concepts go hand in hand. “According to this survey, if 0.6 points of Cs (of its 2.4) went to Ayuso, the PP would have an absolute majority in the Community of Madrid”, analyzed a source that has the confidence of the Chairwoman. The same calculation is made with another party whose vote transfer is essential for the conservative leader to achieve her objective: Vox.

The extreme right has shown unexpected resistance to the pull of the Ayuso effect. On the night of May 4, 2021, while the PP candidate celebrated her victory in the elections, Rocío Monasterio, her Vox counterpart, did something similar: she had won more votes and seats than in 2019. That surprising combination, immediately interpreted by the strategists of the ultra party as the verification that the coexistence of the two brands was not only possible, but necessary to mobilize the entire right-wing electorate, now has the key to the 2023 elections.

Ayuso is convinced that she will govern. But she does not want to depend on Vox, like now: despite the fact that Monasterio’s party has always sided with the PP, her threats and occasional coincidences with the left annoy both the Madrid president and the criticisms that her partner launches at her in the control. “Perfect Lady”, the regional president calls Monasterio). And that is why the party and the government have been focused for months on achieving an absolute majority.

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