The PP thus won in three of the four largest Spanish cities, with the exception of Barcelona, which, on the other hand, saw one of the biggest surprises of these local elections, with the victory of Juntos Pela Catalunya (JxCat), the former president’s right-wing independence party of the Carles Puigdemont regional government.
“I’m going to be mayor of Barcelona,” said the JxCat candidate, Xavier Trias, when 98% of the city’s votes had been counted.
However, Trias, who was mayor of Barcelona between 2011 and 2015, did not win with an absolute majority, so the city government will depend on post-election pacts.
The second most voted party in Barcelona was BComú (left), from the current mayor, Ada Colau, and the third was the Socialist Party, with recent polls and forecasts made today showing a tie between these two forces.
In Madrid, the PP re-elected Jose Luis Almeida as mayor, winning an outright majority, after fighting for the past four years over agreements with other right-wing parties to run the city.
In Seville, the largest socialist-held city, the PP was also the party with the most votes.
With all the votes counted in the capital of Andalusia, the PP elected 14 councilors (it had 8), the PSOE won 12 (lost one) and the VOX won three (plus one), and the absolute majority is achieved with 16 .
In Valencia, Mayor Joan Ribó’s Compromís party, who led the left-wing coalition at the head of the city, lost the election, acknowledging that there had been “a change of absolute majority” to the right in the city, with the PP electing 13 councilors (eight more than in previous elections) and VOX four (two more).
Overall, the PP was the party with more than 97% of the votes counted in today’s municipal elections in Spain, with 31.5% of the vote, followed by the PSOE with 28.18%.
The results reflect a change from the previous municipal elections in 2019, in which the PSOE won 29.38% of the vote and the PP 22.62%.
This is also considered the PP’s first electoral victory in Spain since 2015.
The results also confirm the rise of the far right, with VOX taking 7.19% of the vote in today’s local elections, after 3.56% in 2019.
In addition to municipal elections, there were regional elections today in 12 of the 17 Spanish autonomous communities, but the number of votes is slowing down.
However, the known counts also point to the advance of the PP and the VOX and losses of the PSOE.
The national leaders of the parties have not yet issued any statements, but the spirit of victory is visible at the PP headquarters in Madrid, where supporters of the party are gathering and a podium has been set up for the celebration.
These elections were the first round of voting this year in Spain, where national parliamentary elections are also scheduled for December, at the end of a legislature marked by the first governing coalition in the country, between the PSOE and the far-left Unidas Podemos platform.
More than 35.5 million voters were called to vote for the governing bodies of more than 8,100 municipalities.
More than 18.3 million of these voters were simultaneously called to vote in the elections of 12 regional parliaments.
Today’s municipal elections across the country are seen as a prelude to December’s parliamentary elections, with the PSOE, head of the national government since 2018 and also led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, gauging resistance.
The PP, on the other hand, elected a new leader just over a year ago, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who today is undergoing a major electoral test for the first time and who turned today’s election into a referendum on the national executive led by the socialists.
In addition to the dispute between PSOE and PP, today is also about verifying the magnitude of the expected rise of the far right of VOX in the country as a whole.
Source: DN
