WORLD NEWS: the baron most similar to Feijóo against the most ‘sanchista’ of sanchismo
In breaking news, the following story has emerged from the international scene.
This Monday, at 8:30 p.m., Juanma Moreno dissolved the Andalusian Parliament and called elections for May 17. A few hours earlier, the PP’s electoral guru, Aleix Sanmartín—the strategist who led Moreno to victory in 2018 and gave him an absolute majority in 2022, and who last year signed for the national leadership of the party, snatching it from the PSOE—had been seen in Genoa. The sign was clear to anyone who wanted to read it.
The announcement, untimely and at the last minute, closes the door to the “super Sunday” that Pedro Sánchez could have organized by calling general and regional elections on the same date. Now he will have to replace Montero quickly in the Government. And the PP already mockingly warns: “Tick tock, María Jesús.”
The polls also arrive in the midst of negotiations between the popular parties and Vox in Extremadura, Aragón, and Castilla y León, with Santiago Abascal acting as a blocker before public opinion. What is being settled on May 17 is much more than the Junta de Andalucía. It is a kind of first round of the general elections. The PP baron most similar to Alberto Núñez Feijóo will face off against the most Sanchista of the eight years of Sanchismo.
Andalusia as an outpost
The similarity between Moreno and Feijóo is not only in character or style. It’s a model. When Moreno arrived in San Telmo in January 2019, he promised a “massive tax reduction.” Since then, every year it has delivered: seven tax cuts in seven years that represent an annual saving of 1,000 million euros and that have incorporated almost 800,000 new taxpayers into personal income tax.
Andalusia, which in 2018 was one of the communities with the highest tax pressure, is today the second with the lowest taxes in Spain, only behind Madrid. That is exactly what Feijóo has been promising for Spain since he arrived in Genoa: “End of fiscal hell,” tax cuts, and “the best social policy is to create jobs.”
Also, all his offers, according to sources from his team, “are studied number by number so that they are truly feasible; nothing is announced without going through Juan Bravo’s table.” The Deputy Secretary of Finance of the PP was precisely the one who started the “Andalusian miracle” as Minister of Finance in Moreno’s first term.
The results in Andalusia are those that the PP wants to display as a national argument. At the end of 2025, for the first time in its history, the Community has more self-employed than unemployed: 592,735 self-employed workers compared to 583,057 unemployed. And the number of unemployed is the lowest in 17 and a half years.
Feijóo has presented a comprehensive plan for the self-employed with “zero VAT for those who invoice less than 85,000 euros”—a measure that would benefit 1.4 million workers—and zero Social Security contributions for new entrepreneurs. That “working becomes worth it again” is the core of the Galician politician’s speech for a year and a half.
“Come on, Peter!”
This model is faced by the first vice president, who has been in the Government since day one—since the morning of June 7, 2018, when Pedro Sánchez appointed her Minister of Finance after winning the motion of censure against Rajoy. Only four members of the Council of Ministers have served as long as she has, and she is the only one who has also been promoted and accumulated more positions.
In politics, that has a name: unconditional loyalty. A loyalty that was measured in degrees in April 2024, when Sánchez announced that he was retiring “for five days to reflect on whether it was worth continuing.” Montero asked Sánchez to stay: “We are not going to allow Spain to retreat.”
Montero was the first to speak at the Federal Emergency Committee. And it was she who went out onto Ferraz Street to shout “Come on, Pedro!” before the militants. “Pedro, stay, we are with you,” she sang with the members. No other leader of the PSOE assumed the emotional rescue of the president in that way.
In Congress, there are no half measures either. In June 2024, during a face-to-face between Sánchez and Feijóo, Montero starred in what EL ESPAÑOL described as the “most hooligan” behavior ever seen on the blue bench: applause, shouts of “there he goes!” and laughter at the president’s jokes. “From then on, the president was never cheered in that way, nor was the opposition threatened,” a veteran former minister told this newspaper.
While Moreno developed this fiscal model in Andalusia, also betting on administrative simplification—an inspiration that Ursula von der Leyen herself applies today with her omnibus regulations in Brussels—Montero promoted the opposite model in Madrid. As Minister of Finance, she declared in June 2024 that Catalonia “must have special treatment” in financing. And in January 2025, as a candidate in Andalusia, she promised that “from the Government of Spain we will never allow any Autonomous Community to have more privileges than another.”
The message was identical… but in the opposite direction. Her tax reform was defeated in Congress in November 2024, in what was described as “the most chaotic night” of the chamber in years. The Government itself blamed it internally for not having managed it well. At this point, Spain has had extended Budgets for more than three years, and those for 2026 do not even have a date.
Feijóo says he has the counter-recipe, based on the Andalusian advance: “If Spain stops being a fiscal hell, we will collect more because there will be more activity and we will finance public services with what we generate, not with the largest public debt in history.”
But the greatest damage to Montero came from another side.
In November 2024, she put her “hand on the fire” for Santos Cerdán before the Koldo commission of the Senate. Seven months later, the number three of the PSOE entered Soto del Real in provisional prison. Businessman Víctor de Aldama had also pointed out Montero’s chief of staff, Carlos Moreno, as the recipient of commissions. The vice president denied everything. And she said she felt “deeply betrayed, hurt, and outraged” with Cerdán.
A manual against the other
Faced with Sánchez’s agonizing endurance in the face of the wave of corruption and the scandals of his territorial policy, Juanma Moreno presented his book Manual de convivencia in October 2025. The Andalusian road. A title that is anything but casual: it is the direct response to Sánchez’s Manual of Resistance.
Faced with “resistance,” “coexistence.” In the face of tension, “listening, respect and efficiency in management,” in the words of the Andalusian baron himself. And that is exactly what Feijóo never stops promising for Spain: “Be predictable, boring, stable, defender of institutionality.”
This Monday, sources close to the Andalusian president clarified it: “The legislature was concluded. Why waste more time?” In addition, there was the surprise factor, when everyone took March 31 as the election date for granted.
“I think the PSOE is absolutely out of place right now. That gets to me,” commented a direct collaborator of Moreno. From the national leadership, they added a longer reading: “The best guarantee that there will be no blockades in Andalusia is to vote for the Popular Party.” Because “María Guardiola helped Mañueco win, and we’ll see if Mañueco’s victory also helps Juanma.”
Montero today holds five simultaneous positions: first vice president, Minister of Finance, deputy general secretary of the PSOE, general secretary of the PSOE-A, and deputy for Seville. It is an unprecedented case in recent Spanish democracy. As EL ESPAÑOL said, “the ministers are the ministers of the entire nation,” but Montero “makes her ministerial positions compatible with those of the regional candidate,” which makes it “difficult to think that in her work as a Government she will prioritize the benefit of the citizens of Andalusia over the interest of the Government.”
The latest Centra survey, the Andalusian CIS, was devastating for Montero. Juanma Moreno’s PP would obtain between 57 and 59 seats, maintaining the absolute majority, while Montero would be below the 30 seats in 2022—a result that would be the worst in the history of the PSOE-A.
Yes, this is indeed the closest thing to a first round of the general elections. If only one slightly Sanchista candidate did not fail in this succession of regional elections—Carlos Martínez in CyL. And if, after Easter, the pre-campaign begins at the same time as the first trial of José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García… on May 18, a last agonizing year for Sanchismo can begin.
What This Means:
This report highlights significant developments in the international landscape that could reshape diplomatic relations in the coming weeks.
World leaders are expected to respond to these developments in the coming days.
Follow our coverage for real-time updates on this and other major global stories.
Source: This article was originally published in another language by El Español – Home and has been translated and adapted for our global English-speaking audience. Read the original article here.