The Guardian

Conservatives set for huge win in Spain’s regional elections

Sam Jones

Spain’s opposition conservative People’s party (PP) is heading for an emphatic win following yesterday’s key regional and municipal elections, winning an absolute majority in the city of Madrid and in the surrounding area, and poised to wrest the regions of Valencia, Aragón and the Balearic islands from the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE).

The PP’s triumph, which comes after a bitter and fractious campaign marred by a row over the defunct terrorist organisation Eta and allegations of electoral fraud, will serve as a huge boost to the party ahead of December’s general election.

The results of the polls in 12 regions and more than 8,000 municipal councils also indicate a return to the traditional, two-party system that dominated Spanish politics before the eruption of the far-left, antiausterity Podemos and the now moribund centre-right Citizens party.

By 11.30pm, with more than 98% of the municipal votes counted, the PP had attracted 31.5% of the vote and won 23,248 council seats, while the PSOE had taken 28.1% of the vote and won 20,676 seats.

The incumbent PP mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, secured an absolute majority in the capital, while his party also won the most seats on the city councils of Seville, Segovia, Valencia and Palma. With 60% of the votes counted in the Madrid region, the PP had won 69 seats in the 136 seat regional

parliament, giving its rightwing populist regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, an absolute majority.

In Barcelona, the city’s leftwing mayor, Ada Colau, was relegated to third place. Xavier Trias, a former mayor who belongs to the centreright Catalan pro-independence party Junts, finished first and Jaume Collboni of the Catalan branch of the PSOE came second.

The PP had sought to use the polls as a referendum on the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and his style of government, which it calls sanchismo and depicts as incompetent, over-reaching and hellbent on remaining in office.

“These aren’t just elections to choose a mayor or a regional government,” the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said in an end-of-campaign rally on Friday. “Sanchismo has stained everything and I’m afraid to have to say, respectfully but sadly, that the prime minister of my country has no limits. His party has been unable to stop him and so we must do so together as Spaniards.”

Sánchez struck a less combative note after casting his vote yesterday, urging people to ignore the rows of recent days. “It’s very important that we all go and vote and that we do so in a positive way, forgetting this intolerance, this noise, this depreciation and these tensions that a minority are trying to stoke,” he said.

He began the campaign hoping to stress his coalition government’s economic record and housing reforms. But it descended into rancour after it emerged that the Basque nationalist party, EH Bildu – on whose support the minority government relies in Congress – was fielding 44 convicted Eta members, including seven found guilty of violent crimes, as candidates.

Sánchez criticised Bildu’s decision – describing it as legal but “obviously indecent” – and the Basque party later announced that the seven with violence convictions would not take up their seats, but the PP seized on the issue as further proof of the government’s hunger to remain in power.

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2023-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

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https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/281947432227028

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