The EconomistNovember 9th 2019 Europe 432 with nightly images of burning barricades.
Some 600 people were injured, many of
them police, and €10m ($11.1m) of damage
was done. The government is braced for at-
tempts to disrupt voting in Catalonia.
Such disorder, and the threat of seces-
sion in Catalonia, benefits the right else-
where in Spain. Polls now suggest the So-
cialists might get slightly fewer seats than
in April. The conservative People’s Party
(pp), which governed from 2011 until Mr
Sánchez ousted it in a censure motion in
2018, is set to improve on its poor result in
April. Its leader, Pablo Casado, having
veered right in the spring, has grown a
beard and moved back towards the centre.
But the pp’s recovery is threatened by
rising support for Vox. While Vox’s leader,
Santiago Abascal, criticises illegal immi-
gration, his main pitch is to recentralise
government, ban separatist parties and
crack down on the Catalan regional admin-
istration. His presence in a televised elec-
tion debate on November 4th gave him un-
precedented visibility. At the other
extreme, Mr Sánchez “thought we would
sink and he could govern alone,” says Pablo
Iglesias, Podemos’s leader. The polls sug-
gest Mr Iglesias’s support is resilient.
Mr Sánchez defines the Catalan pro-
blem as one of restoring peaceful coexis-
tence between supporters of independence
and the majority in the region who oppose
it. To uphold law and order, the govern-
ment is doing “everything that’s necessary,
but only what’s necessary”, according to
José Manuel Albares, an adviser to the
prime minister. Mr Sánchez refuses to talk
to Quim Torra, the separatist president of
the Catalan government, until he con-
demns violence and drops his threat to re-
peat a unilateral referendum. But the
prime minister has also ignored calls from
the right to impose direct rule. In the de-
bate he promised to loosen the separatists’
control over Catalan public television and
radio. The Socialists insist that sooner or
later the Catalan conflict requires a politi-
cal solution.
The election is unusually open and the
polls hard to read. Turnout is likely to fall.
Three parties—Podemos, Ciudadanos and
Vox—are clustered between 9% and 14%. In
many less populated provinces the elector-
al system punishes smaller parties. Take
Toledo. Long monopolised by the ppand
the Socialists, since 2015, Toledo has been a
four- and this year a five-way fight. On No-
vember 10th Ciudadanos looks set to lose
the seat it won in April, though to whom is
not clear.
Voters seem, rightly, to heap most of the
blame for the lack of a government on Mr
Rivera. The best chance of the strong re-
formist government that Spain needs to
tackle slowing growth, a dysfunctional la-
bour market, plunging consumer confi-
dence and the Catalan conflict was a co-
alition between the Socialists and
Ciudadanos.Itlookstoolateforthat.In-
steadaSocialistminoritygovernmentis
themostlikelyoutcome,althoughvictory
fortherightisnotimpossible.Inanother
way,too,Spanishpoliticsismorefraught
thaninApril.“Voxisnowsomethingstruc-
turalinSpain, andthatmeans wecan’t
haveaconservativegovernmentwithout
thefarright,”saysMrAlbares.
Thedeadlockistheresultnotjustof
fragmentation but also of other trends.
“Noveltyhasbeena bigadvantageinSpan-
ishpoliticsinthepastfewyears,”notes
KikoLlaneras,a psephologist.Thatbenefit-
edPodemos,thenCiudadanos andnow,
perhaps, Vox and a tiny new left-wing
party,MásPaís.Ithasalsothrustpolitics
intothehandsofa cohortofyoungandin-
experiencedleaders.IfMrSánchezdoesa
lotbetterthanhedidinApril,itwillbea
personaltriumph.Ifhedoesn’t,hewill
haveonlyhimselftoblame.^7T
he typicalRussian big-city mayor ex-
hibits several traits. He is male and
middle-aged. He lives more opulently than
his neighbours. He represents the ruling
United Russia party. And he won his post
not at the ballot box, but by appointment.
Sardana Avksentieva, the mayor of Ya-
kutsk, the regional capital of Russia’s far
eastern republic of Sakha, cuts a different
image. She defeated a United Russia candi-
date in an insurgent campaign during re-
gional elections last autumn. When bill-board owners refused to run her campaign
ads, she hired a fleet of trucks, plastered
them with her likeness, and parked them
across town. She pitched herself as “The
People’s Mayor”, and voters rewarded her.
Ms Avksentieva’s popularity hints at the
kind of leadership voters might prefer, if
they had a real choice. “I’m a harbinger,”
she sighs, “though I don’t want to be.”
Her message has focused on providing
services and on greater transparency—an
oddity in a country where fewer than a
tenth of all regional capitals elect their
mayors directly. “People should under-
stand and feel that their opinion means
something, and that their demands can be
fulfilled,” she says. “Nothing should be de-
cided behind closed doors, no decisions
should be adopted by a small cabal of peo-
ple.” She live-streams city planning meet-
ings. She argues that the capital of a region
with vast mineral wealth—Yakutia is Rus-
sia’s gold-mining centre—ought to be able
to provide good roads and sufficient hous-
ing for its people.
Ms Avksentieva is not a complete out-
sider. Before taking office, she had served
in local and national government, includ-
ing as deputy mayor. Her rise would have
been impossible without the backing of
Vladimir Fyodorov, a powerful local busi-
nessman whose own attempt to run for
mayor was foiled.
Yet her populist posturing goes down
well with voters. She opposed the govern-
ment’s raising of the pension age earlier
this year, calling for a referendum on the
plan, even though she has no say over fed-
eral policy. She has auctioned off several
luxurious suvs that belonged to the
mayor’s office; she also cut down on the in-
ternational travel and lavish receptions
that had become commonplace. She de-
nounced immigration from Central Asia
earlier this year amid protests following
the rape of a Yakut woman by a Kyrgyz la-
bourer. In contrast to regional bosses who
often flaunt their bling, she boasts about
her modest lifestyle. “I drive a simple
Toyota Camry,” she says.
Her most effective communication has
come on social media, where the mayor
has become an unlikely star. She has some
123,000 followers on Instagram, more than
any Russian mayor except Sergei Sobyanin,
Moscow’s boss. The account features Ms
Avksentieva in a range of poses: clad in tra-
ditional Yakut garb for a local festival;
striding confidently in a hard hat while in-
specting a local power station; and smiling
beside a local pensioner who taught the
mayor how to fry up pirozhki(buns stuffed
with tasty things). The comments on her
photos are adulatory. “Every time I read
Sardana Vladimirovna’s posts, I want to
cry: there are actually conscientious offi-
cials out there,” reads one typical entry.
“How I envy you, citizens of Yakutsk.” 7YAKUTSK
A mayor with a modest lifestyle wins
Russian heartsSiberiaThe Camry in the
gold mine
A mayor with a difference