2023-05-29 09:30:13
Madrid Spain swung to the right in Sunday’s regional and local elections. The conservative People’s Party (PP) made strong gains in votes both in the Autonomous Communities, which correspond to German federal states, and in many municipalities.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists lost their share of the vote and now have to look to the parliamentary elections at the end of the year with concern, mainly because of the dispute between their left-wing partners. “It is clear that this is a bad result, not at all what we expected. We got the message,” said PSOE spokeswoman Pilar Alegría about the outcome of the election.
Spain had come through the corona pandemic relatively well under Sánchez’s left-wing minority government. The economic situation is comparatively stable, also because of EU aid worth billions. But unemployment is still high in European comparison. In addition, disputes within the first coalition government since the 1930s repeatedly offered the opposition plenty of ammunition.
Inflation, the consequences of the Ukraine war and several affairs drove Sánchez increasingly into a corner. A new sex criminal law, for example, proved to be a fiasco in the “super election year”. It should be the government’s flagship project. But suddenly it opened the cell doors prematurely for dozens of sex criminals – and also led to a heated argument within the governing coalition.
“In Spain there is an enormous desire for change and the alternative is called PP. This desire for change and this alternative is unstoppable,” said PP spokeswoman Cuca Gamarra. For this, however, the PP needs the right-wing populist Vox in many places, which was also able to gain ground. This party functions in much the same way as the AfD. However, in Spain there is no so-called firewall right.
Last year, the PP formed the first coalition government with the right-wing extremists in the region of Castile and León. In Andalusia, Vox’s PP can be tolerated. On election night, PP officials refused to commit to further alliances with Vox, let alone whether they would consider doing so after the general election at the end of the year.
Vox boss Santiago Abascal stressed confidently that his party had now become indispensable for the “fight against socialism and against communism”. Vox has finally established itself as a nationwide force, he stressed. The well-known journalist and writer Berna González Harbor summed up the mood on election night. “This is the day Vox becomes a normal party,” she said on TV. The development in Spain is reminiscent of the strengthening of right-wing parties in Italy and Sweden.
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In Madrid there was a double PP triumph. Regional head of government Isabel Díaz Ayuso won the absolute majority of seats in the regional parliament, while PP candidate José Luis Martínez-Almeida won the mayoral election. It also prevailed in the Balearic Islands with the holiday island of Mallorca, in Valencia, Aragon, Extremadura and La Rioja, with a clear lead in some cases.
The PP result in the local elections was similarly strong. There, after counting more than 99 percent of the votes nationwide, the People’s Party came to 31.53 percent, 9.30 percentage points more than in the last election. It thus replaced Sánchez’s socialist PSOE as the strongest force at municipal level, which fell 1.15 percentage points to 28.11 percent. Vox achieved only 7.18 percent nationwide in the municipalities, an increase of 4.28 percentage points. But the PP cannot govern without it in many municipalities and cities.
In the future, the PP could appoint the mayor in five of the country’s six largest cities. In Madrid and Málaga with an absolute majority. In Seville, a former PSOE stronghold, in Valencia and in Zaragoza with the help of Vox. In Barcelona, previously governed by left-wing alternative incumbent Ada Colau, former mayor Xavier Trias, running for the separatist junts, won.
Almost 64 percent of the 36.6 million eligible voters cast their votes.
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