Of the twelve autonomous regions at stake in the local elections organized this Sunday, May 28 in Spain, nine were governed by the Socialist Party (PSOE). At the end of the ballot, only Asturias, Castile-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and Navarre resisted the “tsunami” from the right, to use the expression chosen by the current president of Aragon, the socialist Javier Lamban, one of the victims of the blue wave that flooded Spain.
The People’s Party (PP, right) won more than 31% of the vote in the municipal elections, after having absorbed almost all the votes of the liberal Ciudadanos party, which has completely disappeared from the Spanish political scene. With 28% of the vote and 800,000 votes less than the PP, the Socialist Party only loses one point compared to 2019 (29%), but will have to give up important strongholds, such as the region of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Extremadura, La Rioja or Aragon, as well as many cities, including seven of the eight provincial capitals of Andalusia, a region which was for a long time its main breadbasket.
The radical left of Podemos, in sharp decline, disappears from many regional parliaments and municipalities, drastically limiting the possibilities of the left to retain power through post-electoral agreements. In Barcelona, the mayor of the alternative left since 2015, Ada Colau, is preceded by the candidate of the Catalan nationalist right and former mayor between 2011 and 2015, Xavier Trias. More generally, the far-right Vox party doubled the result obtained in 2019, with 1.6 million voters and 7.1% of the vote, and consolidated itself as the third political force in Spain.
A government crisis cannot be ruled out
For the president of the left-wing government, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, these results bode very badly, nearly seven months before the legislative elections expected in December. Especially since he has invested a lot in the campaign for these local elections, presented as a plebiscite and a kind of first round before the legislative elections. “We have heard the message”, responded PSOE spokeswoman Pilar Alegria, who announced a “reflection over the next few months” facing a ” bad results “. A government crisis and a break in the coalition with Unidas Podemos cannot be ruled out. The Socialist Party was to analyze the results on Monday.
The differences and public reproaches between PSOE and Podemos, the exits of the radical left, the parliamentary agreements ” against nature ” sealed with the Catalan separatists of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the heirs to the political showcase of the Basque separatist and terrorist group ETA, EH Bildu, are indeed considered by analysts to be the main reasons for the socialist debacle. Added to this are controversial measures and legislation, from the law on sexual consent, which resulted in the early release of more than a thousand abusers, to the law of gender self-determination, which divided the feminist movement, passing through the pardons and the reform of the crime of sedition approved ad hoc for the Catalan separatists.
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