The Popular Party has led a reversal in today’s municipal elections, winning the PSOE by nearly 750,000 votes and recovering six autonomous communities, including the emblematic Valencian community. The new political map is a great triumph for the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and places him in a great situation to challenge Pedro Sánchez for the presidency in the general elections in 6 months.
The head of the Executive, for his part, will have to reorient his strategy after the failure of the campaign, while Vox has become essential for the popular to govern in many places. Ciudadanos disappears and Podemos and Sumar have suffered a serious defeat.
The PSOE has been one of the big losers of the day both in municipal and regional. It has fallen to second place after losing 446,781 votes (with 99.26 percent counted) in the municipal elections and it has not managed to be the first force in Barcelona, a city that Pedro Sánchez aspired to and in which Pedro Sánchez has devoted himself, in addition to losing the mayors of Seville, Palma and Valladolid, among others. Xavier Trías has managed to have more councilors than Collboni, who is in second place, followed by the current councilor, Ada Colau.
The regional ones have also been a black day for the socialists, having lost the jewel in the crown, the Valencian Community, as well as Aragon, the Balearic Islands and La Rioja. With 93 percent scrutinized, the Government of Extremadura could also lose, while that of Castilla La Mancha, with 94 percent, Emiliano García Page remained president.
Pedro Sánchez had thrown himself into these elections to measure himself with the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who had presented them as a first round of the generals or a plebiscite for the President of the Government.
Some socialist leaders resisted the presence of their leader in their territories and today, some regretted that the campaign has been national. Pedro Sánchez comes out of these elections weakened in the face of the general elections and will be forced to reorient his strategy.
Hegemony in municipalities
The president of the Popular Party, for his part, has achieved the goals he had set for himself. In the first place, to win the municipal elections, being the first to win in 8 years, and secondly, to win the Valencian Community, as the first step to win the general elections in December, as well as Aragon, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja, Cantabria and, with 96 percent scrutinized, also Extremadura.
Today, the PP has turned around the results of 2019, in which the PSOE got 1.5 million votes from them. Now, Feijóo’s party has garnered more than 6.92 million votes, compared to 6.18 million for the PSOE, which gives it an advantage of almost 750,000 support. With 98.26 percent of the votes counted, the advantage of the ‘popular’ is 3.39 points over the Socialists.
In other words, those of Feijóo have managed to add 2.25 million votes to their 2019 results, after absorbing a good part of Ciudadanos, which practically disappears from the regional parliaments and from most of the consistories.
Some results that reinforce the position of the PP just half a year after the general elections were held and that clearly indicate a change in the cycle, which had already been taking place since the regional elections in Madrid, when Isabel Díaz Ayuso swept and almost achieved an absolute majority in 2021, and with the overwhelming victory of Juan Manuel Moreno in Andalusia a year ago.
On this occasion, in addition to achieving an absolute majority in the city of Madrid, which will prevent Almeida from depending on Vox to govern, the popular ones have managed to be the first force in 28 provincial capitals and, what is more important, they have achieved key positions such as Valencia, Seville, Valladolid or Palma de Mallorca, maintaining the government of others such as Malaga and Zaragoza, becoming the party that governs a large part of the country’s large cities.
In the case of Andalusia, it is the first force in all the capitals except Jaén and has achieved an absolute majority in Cádiz; It has also placed first in the three Valencian capitals, the two in Extremadura, and in Albacete, Ciudad Real and Toledo.
Vox, third force
Of course, in some of them it must have the support of Vox, which has positioned itself as the third force in these elections, occupying the position that Ciudadanos achieved in 2019, with 1.59 million votes, 7.2 percent in front of to 3.56 four years ago.
In this way, Abascal’s party becomes decisive for the sum of absolute majorities in 18 provincial capitals. In Andalusia, the PP will need him to be elected in the first round in Seville, Huelva and Córdoba. In the case of Castilla La Mancha, they will be necessary in Toledo, Guadalajara and Ciudad Real. In addition to Cáceres; Valencia, Castellón and Alicante, the three provinces of the Valencian Community; and in Segovia, Valladolid and Burgos in Castilla y León.
There would also be a majority of PP-Vox in the Oviedo City Council; in those of Huesca and Zaragoza in Aragon; and in the Palma City Council, in the Balearic Islands, where it went from zero seats in 2019 to seven in these elections.
PSOE, to reflect
The Minister of Education and Vocational Training and spokesperson for the PSOE, Pilar Alegría, has acknowledged the defeat suffered by the PSOE in the regional and municipal elections held this Sunday and has described the result obtained as “bad”.
Alegría has congratulated the PP on its victory, which it has explained in the “absorption” of Ciudadanos by the main opposition party. In addition, she has warned that those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo will have to agree with “the extreme right” of Vox to govern in many parts of Spain.
“It is clear that this result is a bad result for the Socialist Party, it is not at all what we expected,” he explained in a brief intervention of just three minutes from the party’s headquarters on Ferraz street.
As he has indicated, they aspired to forge majorities of progress thanks to the mobilization of the progressive electorate that “it is evident that it has not occurred”, as he has transferred.
“The Popular Party has absorbed all the Ciudadanos vote and it is also clear that many of those governments that will now have to be constituted in different town halls and in different autonomous communities, will only be possible with the sum of the Popular Party and the far-right party of Vox”, he explained.
In a self-critical tone, he has indicated that the will of the citizens is clear and the PSOE assumes that they must do things better. “We must work harder to achieve that confidence in the next elections,” he said.
Along the same lines, he has indicated that they have to “reflect on the coming months” and continue working from the progressive government so that Spain continues to advance in progress and rights.
The socialist spokeswoman has made these statements in a statement without questions, after learning the results of the 28M elections.