Spain’s regional and municipal map is no longer dominated by socialists with Sunday’s regional and local elections, which the People’s Party (PP, right) won, claiming the start of a “new political cycle” in the country.
The Socialist Party (PSOE), which has headed the national government since 2018, led the regional executives of nine of the 12 autonomous regions that had elections on Sunday and had more than half of them at the end of the vote count lost. only four: Asturias, Canary Islands, Castile La Mancha and Navarra.
The PP, which ruled only two of the regions that went to the polls on Sunday (Madrid and Murcia), was able to lead eight, along with Andalusia and Castile and León, which brought elections forward to 2022 and which the Popular Party also won.
Not winning with an absolute majority in all regions, the PP will in some cases depend on the support of the VOX (extreme right) to govern, as is the case in Extremadura, Aragon or the Balearic Islands.
VOX joined a government in Spain for the first time in 2022, in Castile and León, in partnership with the PP.
In municipal elections, held across the country, the PP was also the party with the most votes overall, winning an absolute majority in the Spanish capital Madrid and winning major cities such as Seville and Valencia on the left.
As in some regions, the PP will also depend on VOX to govern municipalities in which it won on Sunday.
The left also suffered defeat in Barcelona, the country’s second-largest city that has ruled since 2015 with a coalition of different forces and movements.
Contrary to what most polls predicted, in Barcelona, the right-wing independence party Together for Catalonia (JxCat) won on Sunday, although without a majority to guarantee leadership of the municipality, it is now necessary to see what post-election alliances unfold will form . .
The PP also won elections in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla (enclaves in North Africa).
The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, claimed a clear victory in the elections early this Monday as they marked the start of “a new political cycle” in the country, which has national lawmakers in six months, in December.
“Spain has started a new political cycle,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo said in a statement to thousands of PP supporters gathered outside the party’s headquarters in Madrid.
Feijóo, former president of the regional government of Galicia, was elected leader of the PP just over a year ago and had his first election test on Sunday.
VOX also claimed victory both in the regional, where it increased representation in the autonomous parliaments, and in the municipal, where it obtained 7.19% of the global vote (it had 3.56% in the previous municipal parliaments) .
For the leader of the far-right party, Santiago Abascal, VOX Sunday “consolidated itself as a national project” and as a party “absolutely necessary” to build an alternative to the left in Spain.
The PSOE leader and prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, made no statements and it was up to party spokesman and education minister, Pilar Alegria, to make a short statement to journalists admitting the “poor result”.
Socialist regional leaders also admitted defeat, speaking of a “tsunami” hitting the PSOE across the territory.
Source: DN
