2023-05-25 11:00:57
Spain
A life-size electoral test for Pedro Sánchez
In Spain, municipal and regional this Sunday could complicate the task of the Prime Minister, in view of the legislative elections. Extreme right and right dream of stinging regions to the left.
Published
Head of government since 2018, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, who governs in coalition with the radical left party Podemos, plays big on Sunday.
Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faces a key municipal and regional double ballot on Sunday which, six months before the legislative elections, will give an idea of his ability to stay in power. Head of government since 2018, Pedro Sánchez, who governs in coalition with the radical left party Podemos, plays big.
Of the twelve regions (for a total of 17) which will elect their assembly and therefore their government on Sunday, ten are led by his party, either directly or as a member of the ruling coalition.
Endowed with enormous powers, particularly in health or education, the regions governed by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party have been valuable allies for Pedro Sánchez in recent years, especially during the Covid-19 crisis.
But Sunday’s election should mark “a right turn”, whose “intensity” could condition the outcome of the legislative elections, said Pablo Simón, political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid. The precise date of these legislative elections, which must be held before the end of the year, has not yet been fixed.
The PP ready to ally with the far right
In the lead for several months in the polls carried out at the national level, the Popular Party (PP), the main formation of the right-wing opposition, has made these local and regional elections an anti-Sánchez referendum. “There are five days left before voting”, said its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on Tuesday, “and it is only by voting for the PP that we will be able to begin to turn the page on ‘sanchisme’, a neologism formed around the name of the Prime Minister.
“It is only by voting for the PP that we can begin to turn the page on ‘sanchism’.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the People’s Party (right)
Aided by the near extinction of the centre-right Ciudadanos party, the PP believes it can win up to six of the left-led regions and further strengthen itself in its stronghold of Madrid, the country’s wealthiest region, led by by the very right-handed Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
According to the latest opinion polls, he seems especially able to tip four of them: La Rioja and Aragón in the north, the Balearic archipelago and the region of Valencia, in the east. But always with the indispensable support of the far-right Vox party, a double-edged sword.
“The PP prefers to minimize the presence of Vox”
The PP has already been governing since last year with Vox in the rural region of Castile and León, but is regularly embarrassed by the positions taken by its ultranationalist ally, in particular on abortion. Vox is “determined to enter as many regional governments as possible”, but the PP “would prefer to minimize its presence, in order to avoid controversies which could demobilize centrist voters” during the legislative elections, judge Antonio Barroso, analyst at the Teneo firm.
According to Cristina Monge, a political scientist at the University of Zaragoza, this “dilemma” already weighs on Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, who aroused “enormous expectations” when he arrived at the head of the PP a year ago, in ” selling an image of moderate”, but “who does not know what strategy to adopt” with regard to the extreme right.
With a good economic record and anti-inflation measures that seem to have had a real impact on rising prices, Pedro Sánchez is trying to mobilize the left on the risk represented by Vox and has been making announcements for weeks, all over the place. of Spain, in terms of housing or public health. “The economic indicators are good and the voters do not have as apocalyptic a vision as the right” on the economic situation, wants to believe political scientist Cristina Monge, who judges that “the different components of the left are resisting better than what the we could think”.
A fundamental fact for the legislative elections, because if the right and the far right win the elections at the end of the year without having “a clear absolute majority”, the left will have a card to play to stay in power, insofar as the small nationalist and regionalist parties “are always more inclined to seal agreements with the left than with the right”, underlines Pablo Simón.
(AFP)
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