Spain’s conservatives win a landslide victory over ruling Socialists in local elections

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Spain’s conservative People’s Party handed a resounding defeat to the ruling Socialist Party in local and regional elections on Sunday, but despite its strong gains the PP will need the support of the far-right Vox party to govern in many areas.

Voting in 12 regions and more than 8,000 municipalities was a crucial test of the national mood and produced grim results for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, suggesting he will face an uphill battle to hold back emboldened conservatives in the general elections scheduled for December.

The PP won 31.5% of the vote in the municipal elections, an increase of nine percentage points compared to its performance in the 2019 elections, while the Socialists’ 28.1% marked a drop of one percentage point. . Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the PP, hailed the night as the start of a “new political cycle”.

José Pablo Ferrándiz, director of pollster Ipsos, said the elections had been a “total defeat” for the Socialists. “He cannot be hidden or underestimated. Sánchez comes out injured and Feijóo strengthened.

But the PP failed to achieve the absolute majorities it wanted in many regional and municipal legislatures, which means a new era for the Spanish right that will involve coalitions or voting pacts with Vox in order to form many governments. .

With Vox securing 7.2% of the municipal vote, the results also raised the specter of a nationwide PP-Vox coalition if the right wins the general election. That would make it the first far-right party in central government since Spain’s return to democracy more than 40 years ago.

But the PP will not need a coalition partner in the Madrid region, where outgoing President Isabel Díaz Ayuso has strengthened her position and obtained an absolute majority. Ayuso, whose brand of libertarian populism has made her a political star, frequently overshadows her party leader Feijóo and is seen as a future candidate for prime minister. The PP mayor of Madrid also obtained an absolute majority.

As PP supporters celebrated in the street outside the party headquarters in Madrid, the Socialist Party found itself grieving over its apparent loss of power to likely PP-Vox alliances in the regions of Valence — an electoral indicator — and Aragon, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands. In La Rioja, which the PP took from the Socialists, it should be able to govern alone. The PP formed its first coalition with Vox in the Castilla-León region last year.

At the municipal level, the PP has expelled socialist mayors in places like Seville, Valladolid and the city of Valencia, although it will need Vox to govern.

In Barcelona, ​​where national politics were not at stake, leftist mayor Ada Colau was beaten by Xavier Trias, a business-friendly Catalan nationalist and former mayor, who blamed the incumbent for the city’s sense of lost his way. Trias, however, will need the votes of other parties to achieve a majority on the city council, meaning a period of lengthy negotiations is likely to begin.

Across Spain, the PP had sought to make elections over Sánchez even though his name was not on the ballot, portraying him as unscrupulous and untrustworthy and seeking to capitalize on the discontent over his political agreement.

The prime minister has alienated some Spaniards by relying on parliamentary votes from Catalan separatists and a Basque secessionist party, whose election candidates included 44 convicted members of the disbanded terror group Eta, seven of whom were convicted of violent crimes. Sánchez was also hurt by a botched law on sexual consent, pushed by his coalition partner, the far-left Podemos party, which led to the reduction of their prison sentences for more than 1,000 convicted sex offenders. Podemos performed poorly on Sunday.

The prime minister and his allies had lambasted the PP for running a negative campaign and warned that the Conservative Party would eventually cut spending on public services, while noting that its national leaders said little about their plans for government.

Sánchez decided his biggest electoral asset was his handling of the Spanish economy, which has the highest employment levels in 15 years and lower inflation than most of the rest of the EU. But stagnating wages and the prevalence of poor quality jobs have worked against it.

Ipsos’ Ferrándiz said the Socialists had also been hit by high-profile episodes of alleged voter fraud in small municipalities in recent days. “So if people voted at the municipal or regional level, it was bad for the Socialist Party and Sánchez. And if they voted nationally, it was bad for the Socialist Party and Sánchez. . . Things will therefore have to change if he wants to reach the end of the year with a chance of victory.