On the final campaign day in Alicante, there were no rallies. Compromís-Sumar staged a subdued event on the Jorge Juan stairs, featuring Joan Baldoví and Congress members Txema Guijarro and Nahuel González. The closing day mirrored the overall European election campaign, which voters will decide this Sunday: a performance that felt rather stagnant and lacking energy. Europe’s elections, already a challenging mobilization task, have struggled to galvanize turnout since the campaign’s kickoff on May 24, and recent weeks have done little to brighten the outlook.
In terms of the provincial capital, the only national figure to visit Alicante was Santiago Abascal of Vox. Neither Pedro Sánchez nor Yolanda Díaz visited the province, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo opened the campaign in Elche, though that event resembled more of a meeting with leaders from key Valencia Community sectors than a true rally for the nation. The alliance’s top-line candidates visited Alicante in a context that mixed local symbolism with national messaging.
Looking at the main ticket holders across the major parties, Teresa Ribera (PSOE), Dolors Montserrat (PP), Estrella Galán (Compromís-Sumar), and Jorge Buxadé (Vox) featured prominently. Galán kicked off the campaign at the Central Market, paying tribute to victims of bombing as a direct response to the concordance policy proposed by the Valencia Community leadership that unites the conservative and Vox factions. Buxadé accompanied Abascal on a recent Monday at Canalejas, underscoring the alignment of the far-right with the broader campaign narrative.
Ribera has been the subject of repeated clashes, notably with farmers in the Vega Baja, and has not visited the southern comarca recently. On May 29 she attended Casa Mediterráneo as a minister to meet with Andrés Perelló, followed by a rally in Dénia with Leire Pajín. The socialists’ main Alicante event featured Vice President María Jesús Montero. Montserrat’s schedule included a May 31 visit to Torrevieja, while regional leader Carlos Mazón was in Alcoy at a separate event during the same period.
The European election campaign did not yield the kind of rally moment that would allow Pedro Sánchez to headline a regional act in Alicante. The last time he spoke publicly in the city was at the University of Alicante before the autonomous and municipal campaigns began last year. Earlier in May, Sánchez appeared at Casa Mediterráneo, highlighting democratic memory as a central banner to warn against the risks of a rising far-right presence in the European Parliament.
From the PP side, Elche served as the opening stage for a strategy framed as a plebiscite against Sánchez. That moment marked the start of several days in which a judicial case involving Begoña Gómez, the president’s wife, resurfaced to illustrate domestic polarization and the continued salience of national issues over European matters under the current political climate. The party paused its campaign for a brief period but then resumed momentum later in the week, culminating in Alicante with a large gathering that brought in around 800 attendees.
During Compromís-Sumar’s opening, Íñigo Errejón and Vicent Marzà, who holds the third berth on the list, joined Estrella Galán for a joint appearance. The rest of Galán’s Alicante campaign drew attention to a neighborhood gathering in San Gabriel. The assembly carried a distinct Podemos flavor, underscoring the coalition’s emphasis on grassroots and inclusive policy messaging.
Overall, the local campaign activity highlighted a mix of national personalities and regional representatives, with a strong emphasis on regional identity and the defense of democratic norms in the face of broader European political shifts. The cadence of visits and the selection of venues suggested an attempt to fuse local economic concerns with European-level debates, presenting voters with a sense of continuity and accountability across levels of government.
In Alicante and beyond, campaign dynamics reflected regional sensitivities—from agriculture and rural livelihoods to urban development and cultural memory. The central question remains how much impact these themes have on voters in the run-up to Europe’s elections, and whether the alignment of national and regional leaders can translate into meaningful turnout. The narrative in Alicante, as elsewhere, pits the promise of social policies against the friction of partisan rivalry, with the European Parliament serving as the latest arena for those competing to shape the next phase of policy at the continental level. The broader takeaway is a campaign that leans on local anchors while threading through the larger European discourse, hoping to resonate with voters facing a complex mix of domestic and EU-wide issues. (Attribution: contemporary Spanish political reporting)