With legislative elections approaching, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing party suffered a debacle in Sunday’s local elections.
Six months before the legislative elections, the socialist party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suffered a very heavy defeat in the municipal and regional elections, Sunday May 28, in Spain, which does not bode well for its continuation in power at the end of the year. .
The leader of the Popular Party (PP), the main right-wing opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, immediately announced “a new political cycle”. The PP did on Sunday “a giant step“on the road to lead Alberto Núñez Feijóo to the post of Prime Minister at the end of the year, added the president of the government of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, a leader of the party.
General repetition
The PP initially collected the largest number of votes in the municipal elections, more than 7 million (31.5%), or some two million more than four years ago, against less than 6.3 million (28 1%) for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Above all, according to public television TVE and the daily El Paisthe PP has conquered at least six of the ten regions hitherto ruled (directly or within a coalition) by the PSOE: the Valencian Community (east), fourth in the country by population, Aragon (center), Extremadura (west), the Balearic Islands (east), Cantabria and Rioja (north).
But in addition to the PP, the other big winner is the far-right Vox party, already the third political force in Parliament, which, with more than 1.5 million votes in the municipal elections (7.19%), doubled its score in four years and made a spectacular push in many regional parliaments. The polls all announced a victory for the right in this double municipal and regional election, but no one expected the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Pedro Sánchez to suffer such losses.
Sunday’s elections involved all 8,131 municipalities, or 35.5 million voters, as well as the assemblies of 12 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions. Some 18.3 million voters were affected by this second vote. This double ballot was considered a general rehearsal before the legislative elections, the exact date of which is not yet known.