Bernat Armangue
The party of the Prime Minister of the «Comunidad Autónoma» (Autonomous Community) came on Tuesday to 65 of the 136 seats in the regional parliament, as the electoral authority announced after counting around 99 percent of the votes. This enabled it to more than double its 2019 result (30 seats).
Since Ayuso missed the absolute majority of the seats (69), the Conservatives will still have to rely on Vox’s tolerance, despite the large gains in votes. According to official information, the right-wing populist party improved from 12 to 13 seats.
According to this information, the three left parties were only able to win 58 seats and thus had no chance of forming a government. The defeat of the left is also likely to increase pressure on the minority government of Spanish socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Ayuso, together with PP leader Pablo Casado, had emphasized that an election victory in Madrid could mark the “beginning of the end” for the Sánchez government. The election campaign was extremely polarized. There was hardly any mention of the major economic and social problems in a country exhausted by the corona pandemic, which is placing all hopes on the EU’s billions in aid.
Ayuso made a name for herself by repeatedly attacking the Sánchez government and only reluctantly or not at all to implement the corona restrictions for Madrid. Despite higher numbers of infected people and deaths, many gave her credit for keeping it open. Madrid has been called the “party capital of Europe” and pub owners call Ayuso a “Santa”, meaning a saint.
At the end of March, the 42-year-old had terminated the coalition with the liberal-conservative Partgei Ciudadanos, dissolved the regional parliament and scheduled a new election. In doing so, she had anticipated a vote of no confidence in herself. Ciudadanos is now expected to fail at the five percent hurdle.
During the election campaign, the left parties warned against a pact between Ayusos and Vox. Sánchez had described this possibility as “the beginning of the end of a life-filled democracy”. Pablo Iglesias from the left-wing alternative Unidas Podemos, who had given up his post as vice head of government for his party’s top candidacy, even went into battle with the slogan “fascism or democracy”.
The PP of Madrid had suffered a slump in the 2019 election, because by then the conservatives in the region had won all elections since 1995, some with a very large lead.