The Balearic left joins forces in the Senate because it has run out of ideas

In politics, ideas that begin as exceptions can end up becoming the norm. The Balearic left is preparing to take that step.

According to El Debate on 11 October, the PSOE and MÉS per Mallorca are negotiating to run together for the Senate on all four islands on 29 November. Their stated aim is to secure five of the archipelago’s six seats. The model is the so-called «Pitiusan experiment».

A legitimate precedent

It is worth being fair to history. In 1996, a coalition of the PSOE, Els Verds, Esquerra Unida, Entesa and ERC sent Pilar Costa to the Senate with 53.42% of the vote, according to the same newspaper. It was a decisive and legitimate result.

The formula was repeated in 2008 and 2023, and provided the basis for the Pactes de Progrés and the Catalan three-party coalition. Pooling votes is entirely legal. What is open to debate is what it has become.

From an island project to a carve-up of positions

In 1996, the candidacy originated on an island and appealed to a specific electorate. What is being negotiated now is something else. According to published reports, the PSOE in Ibiza is waiting for instructions from Ferraz, while MÉS must put the agreement to its executive and assembly before 16 October.

The question is no longer what the islanders want. It is how many seats can be taken from the opposition. A candidacy defined by what it wants to prevent, rather than what it proposes, reveals its own exhaustion.

One senator for two opposing projects

The Senate is the only chamber where voters choose candidates by name rather than by party. Putting a national party and a pro-independence party on the same ballot is no mere technical detail. How will that senator vote when Ferraz and the nationalist assembly clash, as they have so often before?

Several media outlets have reported that the PSOE leadership is considering joint lists in several regions to prevent the PP from retaining its majority in the Senate. The Balearic Islands would therefore be a testing ground for a national strategy, rather than a response to a need specific to the islands.

Nor is this the first time. In Menorca, in 2019, the PSOE, Més, Podemos and Esquerra Unida tried the same thing but failed to reach an agreement, Menorca.info reported. When unity depends solely on calculation, a change in the numbers is enough to break it apart.

Without ideas, only power remains

That is the heart of the matter. A left that needs to bring parties together to keep occupying seats is a left that has stopped persuading voters. There is no reform to defend or vision for the islands to offer. There is a seat to hold on to.

And this way of doing politics, in which the overriding aim is not to relinquish power, comes at a cost. The facts speak for themselves. The Supreme Court has convicted José Luis Ábalos, former minister and former PSOE secretary of organisation. His successor in the post, Santos Cerdán, is under investigation and is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Pedro Sánchez himself admitted at the party’s Federal Committee in June that his party had been hit by a corruption case.

Is this the project they want to bring to the Balearic seats? Before asking half of society to vote as one, the left should explain what it has done with the trust already placed in it.

What voters deserve

Formentera will get its own senator for the first time this year, following decades of campaigning. It would be a shame if its first representative emerged from a deal struck in Palma or Madrid.

Anyone seeking to govern has every right to join forces. But they should do so with ideas, a shared programme presented to voters and clean accounts. Societies are not a sum of electoral leftovers. Voters deserve to know what they are voting for, not just who they are voting against.

Sources: El Debate (11/10/2026); Menorca.info (10/03/2019); reports on the PSOE Federal Committee (27/06/2026).