Spain: elections in Andalusia, test for the Prime Minister

The president of Andalusia, Spain's most populous region, set early regional elections for June 19 on Monday that could see a further advance by the far-right Vox party.

This election will also be a new test for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez before national elections at the end of next year.

,” said Juan Manuel Moreno (People's Party, right-wing opposition) in a televised address.

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His term ends in December, but the president believes a snap election will give him the legitimacy he needs to deal with inflation and the economic impact of the pandemic.

The People's Party (PP) has been in power since January 2019 in Andalusia (south), a region with 8.5 million inhabitants and traditional stronghold of the Spanish Socialist Party, as part of a coalition with Vox and with the Liberal Party Ciudadanos.

Vox had created the surprise in December 2018 by winning twelve seats in Andalusia, the first victory for the far right since the return of democracy.

The PPP should win the next elections there, according to the polls, without however obtaining an absolute majority of the 109 seats in the regional assembly.

Last Tuesday, the new regional government of Castile and Leon became the first executive in Spain to have far-right members in its midst since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975, as part of a coalition between the conservative right and Vox.

The president of this rural region of 2.4 million inhabitants located north of Madrid, Alfonso Fernandez Mañueco (PP) was sworn in on April 11 by the regional parliament, which had thus validated his alliance with the extreme right.

The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has made no secret of his ambition to replicate the same coalition model with the PP in other regions of Spain, and even at national level after the next general elections, scheduled in less two years.

Founded in 2014, Vox became in the 2019 legislative elections the third political force in the country at the national level, behind the Socialists and the Conservatives, with 52 deputies out of the 350 in the lower house of the Spanish Parliament.