The BNG candidate for the presidency of the Xunta, Ana Pontonhas tired of saying in recent weeks, even before Rueda announced the advancement of the regional elections, that There are many ways to feel Galician and Galician.
The statement seems obvious, but it may contain the key to the results of next Sunday's elections.
The BNG closed this Friday in Santiago an enthusiastic campaign, as defined by the mayor of Santiago, Goretti Sanmartín. A campaign that has turned out well for Ana Pontón.
The nationalist leader has always been ahead of her rivals, especially Alfonso Rueda, and Has got that for days the idea that change is possible is established in public opinion. And if it is possible it is precisely thanks to her.
“I would like you to be here, in my place, now, seeing what I see and feeling what I have been feeling for days,” she said to the nearly 3,000 people who surrounded her, filling the multipurpose pavilion of Sar. “This country has already changed, and on Sunday we are going to make history”he added.
The surveys predict a very close result between the conservative vote for the PP and the vote for the progressive forces, with very different values. But what they all agree on is that the BNG arrives on Sunday with an upward trend, while the PP is clearly on the downward trend.
Therein lies the idea that what Pontón says about the ways of feeling Galician or Galician. Because the nationalist candidate has managed to enter the Galician electorate of the PP that she does not appreciate in Rueda the values that she warned about in Feijóo, and offer themselves as a solvent alternative to an “absent candidate”as he defined it, that he has escaped whenever he could from the debates with her.
“I ask all the people who want change to take the BNG ballot, no matter what they have voted on other occasions,” he said, and insisted, in reference to that fishing ground of Galician PP voters: “There are many ways to feel Galician and feeling Galician, and all are necessary to build Galicia”.
Pontón tried to do it, and at times he succeeded, an exciting speechappealing to the Palestinian cause and the values of Galician cultural identity.
“The BNG symbolizes all the just causesis the ballot of the people who fill the streets to defend the public healthcarea future for young people, so that it is fulfilled The right to housingthat older people have a peaceful old age, to take care of our sea and our territory”.
The closing of the Bloc's campaign also served as a catharsis for an organization that just a decade ago was bleeding to death amid internal disputes.
Along with the new faces, mostly women, with whom Pontón has rejuvenated, feminized and modernized the party, she was supported by historical glories of Galician nationalism such as Xosé Manuel Beiras. Camilo Nogueira, Francisco Rodríguez or Alfredo Suárez Canal.
“We all have the opportunity to feel like protagonists of this change,” concluded the candidate, as if implying that there are also many ways to feel (or) non-nationalist.