The autonomous communities governed by the PP await the next autumn. Over the political course, the PP expects the main unknown of the legislature to be resolved. The one in the event that the socialist president decided an electoral advance, would not only attend the polls. Several barons of the PP study press the button to match their elections with the generals, according to sources of these autonomies. Castilla y León is the clearest case, but Andalusia also meditates him with his eyes to benefit from an alleged punishment for Pedro Sánchez.
The Elections of Castilla y León are scheduled for March 2026, and those of Andalusia, for the month of June of that same year. They are the first autonomies to go to the polls, but the final date of its elections is pending of national policy. Sanchez insists on his intention to exhaust the legislature, but in the PP they do not trust and calculate his times.
If the president of the Government, Castilla y León would go behind and would coincide with his, according to sources of the Castellanoleon government. It would be a technical advance, of a few months, that the PP believes that it would be understood by citizens, because the main risk of an advance is that the reasons are not understood. The president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, left pears with Vox and has extended his 2024 budgets by 2025, after rejecting the conditions of the ultras to support the accounts.
In parallel to Mañueco, who has not revealed his plans in public, the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, has surprised in July the door to an electoral advance. Although the Andalusian Baron insists that his intention is to exhaust the legislature, he also studies an early call coinciding with the generals if the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, advances them. “That is the only thing that could condition the normal electoral calendar that Andalusia has, which is to turn four in the month of June. If the elections were very close, what we are not going to do to the Andalusians is to go to the polls in a short space of time, or spend public money on two electoral processes in a short period of time, because the Andalusians would not understand it and because it would not be reasonable,” said Moreno Bonilla.
The Andalusian Baron believes that the political moment is “of great uncertainty and enormous instability of the Government of Spain”, which is about to see if it will have a parliamentary majority to approve the budgets, which, in his opinion, “can”
The announcement of Moreno Bonilla, which has the advantage of an absolute majority, has surprised some sectors of the PP, who believe that in their case it would not need the impulse of some generals since it has built a personal brand, more transversal than that of the PP, and the advantages for him of a national code campaign are not so clear. In the Junta de Andalucía they believe, however, that Sanchez is very worn and can cause a very wide mobilization against him. In this way, they estimate, the socialist voters who would like to punish him in a more “soft” way could do so by voting to Moreno Bonilla.
In addition to Castilla y León and Andalucía, other autonomies governed by the PP may also have the temptation to press the electoral button early. Especially those punished by Vox without budgets, which are Extremadura and Aragon, and also Balearic Islands, which although it has managed to approve with support from the extreme right, governs in the minority.
The president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, will present her budget project by 2026 and will try to reach an agreement to approve them, according to sources in their environment. Guardiola does not currently contemplate an electoral advance, but does not rule out to consolidate political stability and continue to raise its management with a renewed support from citizens.
Balearic Islands and Aragon, meanwhile, do discard an advance. To the Balearic president, Marga Prohens, he is not going through the head having budgets, according to sources of her government. Meanwhile, the president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, wants to present his accounts by 2026 and try to approve them with the support of Vox. “Do not contemplate the electoral scenario,” said Azcón in July.
In any case, popular barons await the next movements on the political board to make their decisions. “Everyone is waiting to see what happens. In September or October the government of Sánchez should present budgets, and if you do not get them forward, many people believe that in the first semester of 2026 there should be elections,” analyzes a popular leader. “Podemos is not for the work of approving them because it wants to demolish Yolanda Díaz, and the fact that budgets were not approved in a whole legislature would be an unrepeatable scenario,” he rins by summarizing the analysis that extends in many PP forums.
The popular ones also have another possible play: an electoral call for their autonomies, in a plebiscitary key on Pedro Sánchez. The idea has been spoken in some popular sectors, but in principle it is not seriously considered because they have more risks than potential advantages. “The problem is: how do you justify it? If they all did together, it would be interpreted as a partisan criterion and could be penalized. What would be, another plebiciscite about Sánchez? We already did it in 2023,” he doubts a leader of the PP awareness of those conversations.
But in addition, the electoral advance in the territories in which the PP governs with Vox has another problem: that it would be difficult for the PP to get absolute majorities, so the popular would depend again on the ultras for an investiture. The sum of risks, some believe in the PP, advise against the coordinated maneuver, but all measure their steps.
