Spain swung to the right in regional elections, which forced the socialist power to dissolve the National Assembly. Decryption with Juan Jose Dorado, Spanish correspondent journalist in Paris.
Focus on Spain today, after the municipal and regional elections which marked a very heavy defeat for the left, causing early legislative elections for July 23rd. With analysis by journalist Juan Jose Dorado, Spanish correspondent in Paris.
franceinfo: Lhe Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez suffered a major setback in these municipal and regional elections in Spain, the PSOE, so the Socialists lost six of the ten regions?
Juan Jose Dorado: It’s a big blow, very hard, for President Sanchez. You should know that the autonomous regions, the autonomous governments, have a lot of power in Spain, six lost regions, including Madrid, that’s a lot. It should be remembered that there were the regional elections of the autonomous government, but also the municipal elections. And so the socialists lost Madrid, city and region, in favor of the People’s Party.
The left has lost Valence, the region but also the city. They also lost the city of Seville, and Andalusia completely went over to the side of the People’s Party, except for the city of Jaen, which is one of the smallest cities in Andalusia. Even in Asturias, the city of Jigon has moved to the right. So effectively, it is a political setback which effectively led the President of the Council to call early general elections for 23rd July next.
For the moment, Madrid, Valencia, Asturias – it’s very working-class, it was the mines at the time. Which three other provinces did the government lose?
There is in particular Aragon, Zaragoza, which was on the left, and also Extremadura. So it was very rough, which logically led the president to take a decision that no one expected: to dissolve Parliament and call elections for July 23. In the midst of the Spanish presidency of the European Union, for some, Spain is sabotaging its own European presidency, since we do not know when we will have a government.
What made the majority of Spaniards vote for the Conservatives?
Several reasons for this. First, an economic crisis. We can always be told yes, but this month inflation in Spain is among the lowest 3.2%. We forget to say that underlying inflation is at 6.3%, we forget to say that last summer, we were at more than 10% inflation. We can get away with statistics, but the reality on the street is that prices are rising, that people are struggling to get to the end of the month. And then there’s also a political problem, that you can’t govern when you govern against half the country. And that’s what happened also with Pedro Sanchez, who governed with Podemos, the far left party, but against the other half of the country.
It’s very complicated, especially since today, we don’t forget anything. He took decisions with very serious consequences, such as pardoning the Catalan separatists, Catalans who were condemned by the Spanish Supreme Court. He amended a law to reduce the convictions of politicians, who would have gotten their hands on the cash register. Paradoxically, it fell on socialist policies. Three, the very harsh blow of a law which was a modification of the Penal Code, to increase the penalties against rapists, child molesters, assaults on women…
And what happened?
Several hundred criminals who had been convicted had their sentences reduced and, for some, they were even released from prison. This led the government to review its law and change it. And the last thing is that during these elections, the independence party Bildu, which is the political arm of what is ETA, in the Basque Country, presented during the elections some forty candidates who had been convicted of terrorism , seven of whom were convicted of violent crimes. They withdrew the seven, but that move also made the Spaniards think: “Pedro Sanchez, that’s good what you do, but at some point there are things you can’t not allow…”. And so all this means that today Spain has fallen to the right, at the regional and municipal level.
Does this also explain the rise of the far-right nationalist party, Vox?
This explains. Vox with a discourse on immigration that is rising, and today all the same, an important party for the governability, perhaps in the coming months of Spain.