10 months left until the election campaign and less than 11 until the elections. And nothing has changed compared to two years ago, when a depressed and unmotivated left-wing opposition was beginning to be seen, that the Government was toying with Vox and that the PP and the far-right would add up again next time.The most significant fact that confirms 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 burden it truly carries. 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 year before the elections. That what they called 'the Francina effect' existed, 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 disdained, especially because they did not 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 the behavior of suffrage in the Balearic Islands has had in 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 Armengolian 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 advantage that would help her — and incidentally, the entire left — to be re-elected for the third consecutive time. And this 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 office – that the fantasy of the aforementioned effect was fading, if it had ever existed.The electoral 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 for the collapse of the far-left. Undeniable: Podemos went from 6 deputies to 1. Neocommunism was sinking 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 incompetence, would not manage and Armengol would return to be president 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 PSOE federal congress in Seville, Armengol hinted at least to two Majorcan journalists – 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 welcomed the re-election of the undisputed leader with: “Armengol announces the first measure for when she returns to being president in 2027…”.The following months, in fact, throughout that year, things – possibly based on fierce polls 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 was certainly already decided for several weeks.The same newspaper recently published the poll – conducted by the always reliable Balearic Institute of Social Studies – of voting intention which made clear the reason for the resignation: the PSOE is already losing 3.7 percentage points compared to the 2023 result and, worse, loses 4 seats, while the far-left disappears. The nationalists only add one more deputy, in Menorca, and the regionalists get none; the PP is close to an absolute majority and if it doesn't have it – which is more likely – it will be able to make a deal 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 was beginning to be seen two years ago and that the PSOE has now implicitly confessed: that the left has nothing to do.

The recent popular singing of ‘La Balanguera’, organized by Obra Cultural Balear, was attended by Marga Prohens and other PP officials. The intention seemed to be, on the part of the organization, to hold a politically transversal symbolic event devoid of ideological connotations. It was achieved and the result was a great success in participation. 

Thirteen months remain until the regional elections and all Balearic parties are already in full electoral campaign mode or, failing that, will be very soon.

Starting this week, we'll begin to see where the relationship between the PP and Vox might be headed, and therefore, we'll have a rough idea of ​​how it will impact Balearic politics right after next year's elections.

Sometimes you hear or read that the PP's resounding electoral defeat in the Balearic Islands in 2015 was a direct consequence of the popular uprising against the aberrant anti-Catalan policies of José Ramón Bauzá's government. No, that wasn't it.

Since polls have become an essential part of party tactics—properly presented by media outlets aligned with each party—the successive waves of published polls form a jungle of data from which it is sometimes difficult to extract anything meaningful. However, because polling firms do their job well—most of them, at least—they provide highly relevant information, regardless of how the polls are presented by the leading publications of each political camp.

Among some progressives, talking about demographic replacement is frowned upon. Because Vox says so Regarding immigration from Muslim-majority countries, they find the concept tainted. The same applies to immigration in general; they believe it's also inappropriate to call immigrants "immigrants" because that's what xenophobic neo-fascists call them. So they've decided that "migrated people" or "migrants" is more humane, even though the different words—logically—define different situations for the person: "a person is a 'partner' and an 'immigrant' wherever they arrive." However, whatever they call it, it doesn't change the nature of the fact: demographic replacement is a reality. And it is because the enormous number of immigrants who have arrived during the last half-century has transformed the pre-existing social structure. The expert in population evolution, Pere Salvà, said—in an interview with me published in September—that the islanders who lived in the province in 1975 now represent—taking into account natural increase—25% of the total registered population.

Francoism did not disappear with the dictator's death. The fact that around fifty names of Francoists remain on the streets of the Balearic Islands is not a worrying legacy. Nor is it—although it is striking enough—that one can still see the occasional yoke and arrows symbol.