The Socialist (PSOE) campaign, including its closing event by the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, in Barcelona, has just tripped up with several cases of the type that no candidate wants in the final stretch, when there are just hours to go until the elections of May 28th. A real truckload of manure has dropped on the Socialists and will contaminate the hours remaining until the Spanish public cast their votes at the polls, with several cases of vote-buying - in locations from Murcia to Almeria - and with party leaders arrested in these two autonomous communities. As if this were not enough, the organizational secretary of the PSOE in Andalusia, Noel López, who is also the number three for the party in that autonomous community, has in the last few hours been involved in the attempted kidnapping of a local councillor belonging to his party in Maracena (Granada) to try to silence a police complaint over corruption that she wanted to present. In the resolution of the judge in charge of the case, notified to the parties this Thursday, there are sufficiently strong indications of the active participation of Noel López in the kidnapping attempt, in which the mayor and urban planning councillor in Maracena also took part.
The PSOE campaign has thus definitively become immersed in the mire of suspected irregularities and, apparently, does not have enough material to turn the accusations against its adversaries. When it is not about buying votes by promising 100 euros or a work contract, which is the situation in Mojácar, it is the arrest of the candidate for mayor in a municipality in Murcia, and up to 13 arrested in a municipality of 1,300 inhabitants. It is not surprising that in the midst of all this mess in the south of Spain, Sánchez has opted for Catalonia, Tarragona and Barcelona for the closing of the campaign, thus breaking the Socialist tradition of making final election addresses in Madrid and Seville, two places that are very difficult today, because in the first, winning the Community is unattainable with Ayuso at its head while the capital is very difficult against Almeida. In Seville, the Socialists do not have it easy and many of the large Andalusian cities have become impossible, and have ceased to be the great strongholds of old.
Thus, with Madrid lost and the Andalusian capitals very difficult - which these latest putrid revelations certainly do not help - Sánchez has turned his gaze to the Mediterranean: Barcelona and Valencia cities and the autonomous region of the Valencian Country. Here will be their win or loss on 28th March. In the Catalan capital against Trias and Colau and in the other two elections against the PP. That is why he has put all the meat on the grill in Barcelona, where, moreover, the news from the rest of Spain always arrives late. Obviously, the appearance of Xavier Trias with real options to win the game in all the polls - the ones that are prohibited, yet able to be published from abroad, place him as leader - greatly complicates the equation for the PSOE leadership in Madrid, which also does not see with particular displeasure the continuity of Colau if the alternative must be Trias.
On this basis, Sánchez comes to give Collboni the final push, but his capital is worth a little less amid all of the negative news that has emerged in the last few hours. And, as if that weren't enough, the influential American magazine Politico, which usually sees the PSOE leader with good eyes, has sketched a very raw analysis of the Socialist leader this Thursday. It predicts a PSOE defeat in prominent localities and autonomous regions and blames him personally. It portrays him as a questioned leader and asserts that these doubts will be fully seen after the polls. All this under the title "Spain's socialists have a Sánchez problem". Too much weighing them down at a time when all parties, including the PSOE, need all the votes. An opportunity for Colau, but also for Trias if he manages to reel in Socialist voters or abstentionists.