Political parties give this Thursday the go-ahead for the campaign for the general elections on November 29, which officially begins at midnight. Pedro Sánchez has chosen Seville for his first rally, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been in Badalona, and Ada Colau and Irene Montero have kicked off in Madrid with separate events. Santiago Abascal, for his part, will close the pre-campaign with a rally in Huesca before gathering his followers on Friday in Plaza de Colón.
Fifteen days remain ahead in which the candidates will travel around Spain to ask for the vote, with an agenda of rallies, interviews, and debates that will end on Friday, November 27. Saturday 28 will be the day of reflection and on Sunday 29 the elections will be held.
In addition to territorial events, the campaign will be accompanied by the electoral debates prepared by the Academia de Televisión. With dates and formats still to be confirmed, a face-to-face between Sánchez and Feijóo is planned and a four-way debate in which Abascal and Colau would also participate.
The first official day, Friday 13, will take Sánchez to Pamplona, Abascal to Madrid, and Montero and Gabriel Rufián to Palma, while the PP is preparing for Saturday a large rally in Santiago de Compostela.
Sánchez opens in Seville and will travel on Friday to Pamplona
As he already did in the two general elections of 2019, Pedro Sánchez has again chosen Seville to inaugurate the socialist campaign. The president of the Government and candidate for re-election takes part this Thursday in a rally at the Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones de Sevilla (Fibes), where the PSOE also held its most recent federal congress.
In the previous general elections, those of July 2023, the socialist kickoff took place in Madrid. This time, Sánchez returns to the Andalusian capital after a pre-campaign interrupted by the train accident in Urda (Toledo), which forced part of his political schedule to be suspended.
On Friday he will travel to Pamplona to take part, at 19.30 hours, in a rally at the frontón Labrit. He will be joined by the president of Navarre and general secretary of the PSN, María Chivite; the minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and head of the list to the Congress for Navarre, Elma Saiz, and the Senate candidate Ángel Moleón.
Socialists run for election under the slogan "With the force of the people".
Feijóo chooses Badalona together with Albiol and prepares a rally in Santiago
Alberto Núñez Feijóo inaugurates the PP campaign in Badalona (Barcelona), accompanied by the city mayor and popular candidate for Congress for Barcelona, Xavier García Albiol.
The choice of Catalonia responds to the electoral importance of this community, which distributes 48 of the 350 seats in Congress. In the previous general elections, the PP obtained six Catalan MPs, five from Barcelona and one from Tarragona, and now it aims to improve those results and also secure representation in Lleida and Girona.
Over the next two weeks, Feijóo will have the support of the PP regional presidents and the former Government presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. The party will focus its speech on the need for a change of Government and on its proposal for a "national reconstruction".
On Friday, Feijóo will share an event in Madrid together with the president of the Community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and on Saturday he will be in Santiago de Compostela, where he will speak at 12.00 hours in the Multiusos Fontes do Sar together with the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda.
Abascal closes the pre-campaign in Huesca and brings together Vox in Colón on Friday
Santiago Abascal arrives at the official start of the campaign after an intense agenda of events that has taken him to visit more than two dozen provinces since the announcement of the election advance.
This Thursday he has planned media appearances in Logroño and a rally at 19.30 hours at the Palacio de Congresos de Huesca, before Vox holds its poster-sticking events. The party has announced that this evening it will have events in Guadalajara, at 23.00 hours, and Madrid, at 23.15.
However, the main opening event of Vox will take place on Friday the 13th, at 20.00 hours, in the Plaza de Colón in Madrid, a usual setting for the formation, which has organized there demonstrations and large-scale gatherings.
Before that event, Abascal is scheduled to travel to Toledo during the morning of Friday to hold a meeting with citizens and attend to the media.
The start of the campaign also comes, in addition, after the controversy over his interview on 'La Revuelta'. The presenter, David Broncano, later acknowledged that he regretted not having relied more on comedy during the conversation and for having allowed Abascal to choose the audience. "I messed it up," he admitted. For his part, Vox leader assured that Broncano "had a hard time" due to pressure from the left.
The controversy spread to the interview that Abascal had planned with Jordi Wild, suspended after Vox denounced that RTVE and El Terrat refused to publish the 40 minutes removed from his appearance on the program.
Under the slogan "Common sense," Vox has shaped its campaign around three main pillars: national priority, deregulation, and remigration. The party has already announced that it will close its election rallies on Friday 27 in Valencia.
Colau kicks off in Vallecas together with Emilio Delgado
The Frente Amplio candidate, Ada Colau, has chosen the Madrid district of Puente de Vallecas for her opening rally, this Thursday at 6:00 p.m.
She was accompanied by the head of the list to Congress for Madrid, Emilio Delgado, of Más Madrid; the leader of Izquierda Unida Toni Valero and the leader of Movimiento Sumar, Verónica Martínez.
This is how the coalition begins its campaign in one of Madrid’s districts with the greatest tradition of voting for the left, before moving its activity to other communities.
On Friday, Colau plans to dedicate the day to interviews and media attention. Her first major rally of the official campaign period will be held on Saturday in Seville, a community especially relevant for the alternative left because of the number of seats it distributes and the presence of several candidacies.
In Andalusia, among others, Frente Amplio, Podemos and Adelante Andalucía will compete, which run separately in these elections.
Montero begins in Madrid with Belarra and will share a rally with Rufián in Palma
Irene Montero has also chosen Madrid to kick off Podemos’ campaign, with an event this Thursday alongside the group’s secretary general, Ione Belarra.
On Friday, she is scheduled to first take part in a gathering in Alcalá de Henares and then travel to Palma, where she will share a rally at 6:00 p.m. with Gabriel Rufián, head of the list for ERC.
The event will be held at the CEIP Son Oliva and will also include Carme Gomila and Lucía Muñoz, members of the Ara Més-Front Ampli candidacy in the Balearic Islands.
The meeting responds to the collaboration agreement that Podemos and ERC maintain for these elections, although both parties present differentiated candidacies in other territories.
Balearic Islands is an exception within the fragmentation of the alternative left. There, Ara Més has agreed on a coalition with the Frente Amplio parties, while Podemos has reached an agreement with the Balearic formation to incorporate independents into the candidacy, including the third spot on the list.
After her trip through Palma, Montero is scheduled to continue the campaign on Saturday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and on Sunday in Seville.
Election debates, another of the major appointments of the campaign
Along with rallies, the parties face a campaign in which televised debates will take on special prominence. The Television Academy is working on organizing meetings between the main candidates, although the dates and the definitive formats are still pending.
Among the options scheduled is a face-off between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in addition to a four-way debate in which Santiago Abascal and Ada Colau would also participate.
The campaign will end on Friday, November 27. After the day of reflection on Saturday 28, Spaniards will go to the polls on Sunday 29 to elect the 350 deputies of the Congress and the senators who must be renewed.