Sunday’s election win by the Popular Party (PP) in Galicia confirms the north-western region’s status as a stronghold for the Spanish conservatives, while underlining the tenuous position of Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez.
The PP secured a fifth successive absolute majority in Galicia, its 40 seats in the 75-seat regional assembly extending a winning streak that stretches back to 2009. The Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), meanwhile, underlined its position as the main opposition party with its 25 seats representing a record result.
However, the biggest surprise was the performance of the Socialists, who secured nine seats, their lowest share ever.
Inés Rey, the Socialist mayor of the Galician city of A Coruña, described her party’s result as “unreservedly bad”, while the conservatives cast their victory as the prelude to their arrival in power in Madrid under party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
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“This is the success of the positive, forward-looking politics that will soon reach all of Spain with [Alberto] Núñez Feijóo,” said Juanma Moreno, the party’s leader in the Andalucía region, which he governs.
Polls had suggested that the PP’s majority might have been in jeopardy and there were several reasons for optimism within the opposition. The PP’s candidate, Alfonso Rueda, was a party apparatchik with little identity of his own who was often pushed out of the spotlight before the election by Núñez Feijóo, who campaigned hard in his native region.
Núñez Feijóo had appeared to hand the opposition a huge gift a week before votes were cast when it was revealed that he viewed clemency measures for Catalan nationalists as potentially viable. This was despite the fact that he has been fiercely attacking such measures, including an amnesty law, being implemented by the Sánchez government.
In addition, a high turnout of 67 per cent (without taking into account votes from abroad) fuelled hopes on the left that Galicians had been mobilised to end the era of conservative government. However, that turned out not to be the case and this rural region on the Atlantic coast has bolstered its image as the most faithful bastion of Spanish conservatism.
[ Spanish conservative leader under fire as Galicia votesOpens in new window ]
In the early years after the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, conservatives governed in Galicia and Manuel Fraga, a former minister in the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, was its president from 1990 until 2005. This latest election suggests Galicians’ support for the PP is not flagging.
By contrast, this is the latest in a series of poor local results for Sánchez’s Socialists, who lost control of several regions last year, leaving them in control of only three of Spain’s 17 regions. The PP governs in 11, many of those in tandem with the far-right Vox.
The PP has chosen to see the Galician election as a good result for its leader, whose lack of authority had started to come under scrutiny. The right has also seen it as part of a broader backlash against the prime minister and his fragile government, which relies on Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalists in parliament.
“Was this a test of the validation of Núñez Feijóo?” asked the FAES, a right-wing think-tank close to the PP, in an editorial. “Well, he passed it with flying colours.”
[ Independence ‘on standby’ in Catalan heartlandsOpens in new window ]
It said that the PP’s absolute majority in Galicia “represents, across Spain, the beginning of the end of ‘Sanchismo’.”
However, Ana Pontón, the BNG’s candidate, insisted that it was a mistake to interpret the result in a national context.
“It is obvious that Galicians did not vote thinking about the amnesty,” she said.
Meanwhile, there was bad news for Vox, which failed to win any seats in the local assembly, making Galicia the only region where it does not have representation.
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