The polling institutes had not foreseen such an earthquake, nor should the Spanish government have expected this election outcome. It was expected that there could be a tight result in some cities, and that one or the other municipality could be lost to the opposition. But the result that is clear after this election Sunday in Spain is much clearer: it is a big slap for Spain’s left.
36.6 million people across Spain were called to vote this Sunday. The parliaments of twelve of the 17 autonomous regions and the city councils and mayors of all 8131 municipalities and the two autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa were elected. The vote was a mood test for the parliamentary elections at the end of the year – the commitment in the election campaign of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his challenger Alberto Núñez Feijóo was correspondingly high. Both left no doubt that they would take the result personally.
For Sánchez, who is seen by many as the beacon of hope for European social democracy, it has now become a lesson to be learned. It is particularly clear in the largest cities where the socialists could once be sure of their following. But this Sunday the six largest cities, each of Spain’s metropolises with more than 500,000 inhabitants, fell to the right-wing parties. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga – the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) has not achieved a satisfactory result in any of these metropolises. Things looked different just before the election: the Socialists were hoping for re-election, and not only in Seville, the “cathedral of socialism”. Barcelona also had their candidate, Jaume Collboni, in mind after a tight race with the previous left-alternative mayor Ada Colau.
After this election, Spain is more clearly divided into two blocs than it has been for a long time
But things turned out differently. In Barcelona, the winner of the election is Xavier Trias. The 76-year-old ran as an independent candidate for the conservative Independence Party Junts, which also includes Carles Puigdemont. Socialist Collboni came in second and Ada Colau slipped just behind him to third place in the voters’ favour. The strengthening of the right has another component, especially in Catalonia: there the right-wing extremist Vox moves into all parliaments of the provincial capitals. In the future, two Vox MPs will also sit on the city council in the Catalan capital Barcelona.
Vox and the Partido Popular, which was celebrated as the big victor at the party headquarters in Madrid on election night, are also benefiting from the decline of another party: Ciudadanos, a liberal force that was still to be taken seriously in the last local elections, has disappeared from the scene. Its voters have mostly drifted to the Conservatives, some to Vox and – to a much lesser extent – to the Socialists. Ciudadanos originally set out to cross the hard front between the left and right-wing blocks in Spain, and they wanted to settle in the middle. The project failed. After this election night, Spain is more clearly divided into two blocks than it has been for a long time.
The PP came to around 32 percent nationwide, an increase of more than nine percentage points compared to the last election in 2019. The conservatives are replacing the socialists as the strongest force at local level. The PSOE came to a good 28 percent and thus lost a little more than one percentage point.
Victory in Madrid gives self-confidence for the election campaign
The Socialists’ losses are not as great as the Conservatives’ gains. However, observers and commentators still saw the outcome of the election as an important signal for the parliamentary elections at the end of the year. According to the conservative daily, the Socialists and their coalition partner Podemos urgently need to rethink their strategy for the election campaign El Mundo. Several observers blamed the disaster surrounding the “Yes means yes” law for the election defeat. With the law, led by the controversial left-wing populist Equal Opportunities Minister Irene Montero, the Sánchez government wanted to reform sex criminal law. It was supposed to be a flagship feminist project, but mistakes in the conception of the law ultimately had to be ironed out with the help of the opposition because Podemos, the Socialists’ junior partner, was not prepared to reform the reform.
So did Sánchez receive the punishment that his coalition partner actually deserves? In any case, the socialists do not only have to get over defeats in the big cities. In the future, the conservatives could also govern in the autonomous regions of Aragón, La Rioja, Extremadura, Castile-La Mancha, on the Balearic Islands and in the Valencia region. When it comes to forming a government, it now depends on whether, and if so, where, the Partido Popular will team up with the far-right Vox in order to be able to govern. There are already precedents for such alliances: in the Castile-Leon region, the conservatives have been governing in a coalition with the ultra-right since last year; in Andalusia you can be tolerated by her.
In the capital region of Madrid, where the controversial regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso has so far governed with the support of Vox, the conservatives came out of the election so strengthened that Ayuso can govern alone with an absolute majority in the future. The result was similar for José Luis Martínez-Almeida: Madrid’s conservative mayor will also hold the absolute majority in the city hall in the future. A resounding victory in the capital: At the election party in the PP headquarters in Madrid, not only the local heroes Ayuso and Almeida were celebrated, but also PP boss Feijóo, who should now be campaigning for the office of prime minister with increased self-confidence.