Huge victory for the right in Spain: will the PP do coalition deals with the far-right six months before the general election?
Failure on the left. Centre party Ciudadanos is gone.
Ciudadanos has gone to zero. Rivera could have been Deputy Prime Minister in 2019. Now they have disappeared from all the regional parliaments and Villacís is out of the City Council in Madrid. They have some random councillors left, scattered throughout Town Halls around the country. Podemos has almost disappeared. Clearly releasing rapists and paedophiles from jail early while selling yourself as the most progressive, feminist party on the planet is not a good electoral strategy. Not even their own voters are that stupid. The PSOE lost but in numbers of votes, regional parliament seats and councillors, it mostly held its position. Sánchez's non-appearance since last night says it all. The PM has not even tweeted.
Now that Ciudadanos and Podemos, the centre and the woke far left, are irrelevant, the only new party at the national level still standing after ten years of political experiments in Spain is the radical right, Vox, and they won more power on election night: 795,000 more votes and 1,165 more councilors at the local level and 221,000 more votes and 33 more seats at the regional level. Those new voters showed support for the xenophobic speeches and framing of Abascal's national populists, or at least were not bothered by them, so the rejection of "others" will continue to be normalised in Spain’s public sphere.
It was a big win for the right last night. Over in the PP, Feijóo has done what Casado did not know how to do but not as much as Ayuso in Madrid or Moreno in Andalusia have shown can be done. Wouldn't the PP be better off if they swapped out the man from Galicia for the lady from Madrid or the gentleman from Andalusia at the national level? The conservatives won back 1.8 million votes, 3,048 councillors and 124 regional parliament seats.
The PP will be able to govern alone in Madrid, La Rioja and Melilla but if it does deals with Vox, the conservatives and the far-right could govern together in Aragon, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Extremadura, Murcia, Valencia and Ceuta. Feijóo will no longer be able to postpone that decision on what to do about those deals. Ayuso in Madrid and Moreno in Andalusia have shown that their renewed versions of the PP are capable of achieving overall majorities without Vox. Feijóo's version, if we look at yesterday's results, is not: it is only capable of achieving minority victories that will need the support of the far-right, which has so often proved a red line in other European countries. Does Feijóo want to be Prime Minister of a coalition government with the far-right or would he prefer to let Moreno or Ayuso have a go to try to achieve an overall majority at the national level?
Will Sánchez, who is now about to begin his six months in the presidency of the European Union from a position of great weakness internally, both in terms of power and image, come up with some way to save the PSOE and the left? Will Yolanda Díaz be able to win back some of the disillusioned votes on the far-left with less stupid ideas than those offered by Podemos this past year? Is Vox interested in going in to those regional governments with the PP, as the junior partner, six months before the general elections, or should Abascal make a show of being strong and fight tooth and nails until the polls in December, against Feijóo's “cowardly right” to try to grab more votes at Christmas?
"Voters have categorically punished Sánchez's way of governing the country, marked by sectarianism, institutional lies and polarisation and by his alliances with populists and separatists." (El Mundo)
“The PP’s good results in Madrid, Andalusia and Valencia are an endorsement of Feijóo’s national leadership and at the same time mean the PP leader needs to decide what to do politically in those places where Vox votes are needed to govern.” (El País)
“At these elections, Prime Minister Sánchez has dragged the PSOE to a defeat that perhaps could have been avoided if senior regional leaders had exercised their leadership more responsibly and if they had challenged the unusual course this parliament has taken.” (ABC)
“Most of the PP’s new regional first ministers will have to do a deal with Vox, who are the other great winners of this election day. The far-right has not only increased its vote, it has also increased its institutional power. And it is now clearer than ever that, without their support, Alberto Núñez Feijóo will never be able to govern. For the PSOE, this is a historic crash. And further to their left, the result is even worse.” (El Diario)
"When defeat comes in so many different places and circumstances, when it affects leaders as different as Puig, Lambán or Fernández Vara, there is only one explanation: Spain has had enough of this PSOE, of Sánchez, of his policies and his deals with terrorists, separatists and all kinds of criminals.” (Libertad Digital)
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Very disappointed with your reporting lately, the sneering towards anything left wing has increased. It is no longer possible to get a balanced view of Spanish politics from your blog. I am unsubscribing. Adios.