Spain’s conservative People’s Party inflicted a resounding defeat on the ruling Socialist Party in local and regional elections on Sunday, but despite its big gains, the People’s Party will need the support of the hard-right Vox party to govern in many areas.
The vote in 12 regions and more than 8,000 municipalities was a crucial test of the national mood and produced bleak results for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, suggesting he will face an uphill struggle to fend off emboldened conservatives in a general election due in December.
The People’s Party won 31.5 percent of the vote in the municipal elections, up nine percentage points from its performance in the 2019 elections, while the Socialist’s 28.1 percent is a decrease of one percentage point. Alberto Núñez Viejo, leader of the People’s Party, hailed the night as the beginning of a “new political cycle”.
Jose Pablo Ferrández, director of pollster Ipsos, said the election was an “unmitigated defeat” for the Socialists. “It cannot be hidden or underestimated. Sanchez comes off injured and reinforces Vigo.”
But the People’s Party did not secure the absolute majority it wanted in many regional and municipal legislatures, which would mean a new era for the Spanish right that would involve alliances or voting agreements with Vox in order to form many governments.
With Vox taking 7.2 percent of the municipal vote, the results also raised the specter of a national PP-Vox coalition if the right prevailed in the general election. This would make it the first hard-right party in the central government since Spain’s return to democracy more than 40 years ago.
Madrid President Isabel Diaz Ayuso consolidated her position and won an outright majority © Chema Moya / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
But the People’s Party will not need a coalition partner in the Madrid region, where incumbent President Isabel Diaz Ayuso strengthened her position and won an absolute majority. Ayusu, whose brand of libertarian populism has made her a political star, is frequently overshadowed by her party leader Figo and seen as a future prime ministerial candidate. The mayor of Madrid also won the absolute majority.
While PPP supporters celebrated in the street outside the party’s headquarters in Madrid, the PS was left mourning its apparent loss of power over potential PP-Vox alliances in the regions of Valencia – an electoral flagship -, Aragon, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands. In La Rioja, which the People’s Party had taken from the socialists, it was planned that he would be able to govern on his own. PP formed its first regional alliance with Vox in the Castile-Leon region last year.
At the municipal level, the People’s Party has expelled socialist mayors in places like Seville, Valladolid and the city of Valencia, even though it will need Vox to govern.
In Barcelona, where national politics were not at play, the left-wing mayor Ada Colau was defeated by Xavier Trias, a pro-business Catalan nationalist and former mayor, who blamed the incumbent for feeling the city had lost its way. However, Trias will need the votes of the other parties to reach a majority in the City Council, which means that a protracted negotiation period is likely to begin.
Across Spain, the People’s Party sought to run the election around Sánchez even though his name was not on the ballot, portraying him as unscrupulous and untrustworthy and seeking to capitalize on discontent with his political deal-making.
And the prime minister alienated some Spaniards by relying on the parliamentary votes of the Catalan separatists and the Basque separatist party, whose electoral candidates included 44 convicted members of the disbanded terrorist group ETA, including seven convicted of violent crimes. Sanchez was also hit by the failed sexual consent law, pushed by his coalition partner the hard-left Podemos party, which has led to more than 1,000 convicted sex offenders being overturned. Podemos underperformed on Sunday.
The prime minister and his allies had criticized the People’s Party for running a negative campaign and warned that the conservative party would end up cutting spending on public services, while pointing out that its nationalist leaders were not saying anything about their plans for governance.
Sanchez decided his biggest electoral asset was his management of the Spanish economy, which has the highest levels of employment in 15 years and lower inflation than most other EU countries. But stagnant wages and a proliferation of low-quality jobs were to his credit.
Ipsos’ Ferrandis said the Socialists had also been affected by alleged electoral fraud incidents in small, well-publicized municipalities in recent days. “So if people vote municipal or regional, it’s bad for the PS and Sánchez. And if they vote nationally, it’s bad for the PS and Sánchez… So things have to change if he wants to get to the end of the year with a chance of winning.”
