The PSOE confession of Armengol: the left has nothing to do

10 months left until the election campaign and less than 11 until the elections. And nothing has moved regarding two years ago, when a depressed and unmotivated left-wing opposition was beginning to be seen, that the Government was mocking Vox and that the PP and the far-right would add up again next time.The most significant fact that confirms that everything is as it was is Francina Armengol's renunciation of disputing the presidency with Prohens again. If one only reads the bold print of the deed, or as the island PSOE has sold it, one cannot appreciate in any way the political weight it truly has. To value it in its just measure, it must be placed in the pertinent context.Armengol received the 2023 defeat as a blow, if not personal, at least against her political pride. And a very deep one. This is explained by what her circle asserted throughout the entire year leading up to the elections. That there existed what they called 'the Francina effect', the attraction directly attributable to the leader's public personality and her management in the Government, which would produce a sufficient number of votes that would dispel assumptions about a potential right-wing victory, a possibility they despised, especially because they didn't believe Prohens had the capacity to regain enough support for the PP.It was a conception of electoral politics that deliberately abstained from the main characteristic that has marked the behavior of suffrage in the Balearic Islands during recent decades: the growing importance of the national key. Despite this phenomenon, easily perceptible in the evolution of the results at the polls since at least 2007, they faced the 2023 elections with that conviction.It is worth saying that it was not only the Armengol environment that said so. It was a more widespread perception. Even among certain nationalists, it was believed that the president had a personal and political plus that would help her — and incidentally, all the left — to be re-elected for the third consecutive time. And it was not only happening in the world of political aristocracy: trade unionists and members of independent civil associations, anti-PP and pro-left, thought much the same.Everything, however, changed when a few weeks before the elections the socialist leadership began to understand –surely because of the internal polls that would reach them from the central headquarters– that the fantasy of the aforementioned effect was fading, if it had ever existed.The election night did nothing more than confirm the catastrophe: the left lost the Government and Armengol, the presidency. Suddenly, however, the socialists warned –it was a correct reading, there was no doubt: they were right– that they were not responsible for the disaster, but rather the collapse of the far-left. Undeniable: Podemos went from 6 deputies to 1. Neocommunism was collapsing and dragging the entire left towards the opposition abyss.The slogan that the local PSOE leadership then imposed was that the defeat was a mere parenthesis and that Prohens, in her incapacity, would not get out of it and Armengol would be president again in 2027, even if she had fled to Madrid, taking advantage of the general elections of July 2023.It is believable that he thought so. Or, at least, that he was eager to return and "finish the job".At the end of 2024, at the federal congress of the PSOE, in Seville, Armengol at least let two Majorcan journalists know – who later recounted it – that she would indeed be a candidate against Prohens. It is even more forceful than when the regional congress was held, in March 2025, the website of the Balearic Socialist Party greeted the re-election of the undisputed leader thus: “Armengol announces the first measure for when she returns to be president in 2027…”.In the following months, in fact, throughout that year, things – possibly based on fierce surveys for the socialists – changed. When in February 2026 the newspaper Última Hora reported that Armengol would resign due to the evidence that the chances of winning again were nil, it had surely already been decided for quite a few weeks.The same newspaper recently published the poll – conducted by the always reliable Balearic Institute of Social Studies – of voting intentions that highlighted the reason for the resignation: the PSOE is already losing 3.7 percentage points compared to the 2023 result and, what is worse, loses 4 seats, while the far-left disappears. The nationalists only add one more deputy, in Menorca, and the regionalists do not get any; the PP is close to an absolute majority and if it does not achieve it – which is more likely – it will be able to pact again with Vox, which will at least increase by one seat.This is the reason that explains why Armengol wants to stay in Madrid and confirms what began to be seen two years ago and that the PSOE has now implicitly confessed: that the left has no chance.