The map of territorial power is dyed blue with the triumph on Sunday of the Popular Party, which exponentially increases its institutional power, changes numerous governments at the municipal and regional level. In the early hours of the morning, the Valencian Community and the autonomous governments of Aragon, the Balearic Islands, Extremadura and La Rioja passed into the hands of the PP. The victory of the PP over the PSOE includes the overturn in all the Andalusian capitals, except Jaén, and many other significant ones, such as Valencia, or the possibility of governing in Valladolid. In many places, such as the Community and the City Council of Madrid and several capitals of Andalusia, the triumph also occurs by absolute majority, a concentration of vote that begins to be difficult to see in Spain. It is a resounding success although in overall percentage of vote in municipal – where all Spaniards vote – its distance with the PSOE is only three points and 760,000 votes throughout Spain, after totally engulfing Citizens, which certifies its disappearance.
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See the results of the 28-M Elections
The bad result of the PSOE translates into the loss of just 400,000 votes and remains above six million. It obtained 6.9 million in the last general elections of November 2019, and 6.7 million in the municipal elections of 2019. This Sunday he got 6.2 million, although the loss of political power that derives from that result is much greater. The dispersion in two, three and even four candidacies in some places on the left to the left of the PSOE has harmed its ability to govern by not being able to add up to maintain autonomous Executives and town halls.
The great novelty that the PP faces from this Monday are the many municipalities and all the communities, except Madrid, in which to govern it must agree with an ultra-right formation that has not hidden its questioning of some of the structural principles of democracy, Vox. It is a decision of enormous importance because it means putting this formation at the table of the governing councils and this time the decision has to be taken directly by Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
When it was made in Castilla y León, he argued that it was an inheritance of Pablo Casado and has been very imprecise in every statement related to that possibility that one day would arrive. Those of Santiago Abascal have doubled their municipal results and climb to a little more than 7% of the vote with a million and a half voters (although far from the more than three and a half million votes of the second general elections of 2019). Vox's ability to access institutional power is among the least hopeful news of election day and forces us to reflect on the stability of a far-right vote in Spain.
The Popular Party grows, absorbs Ciudadanos and has an ally that emerges strengthened from the race. Quite the opposite of the PSOE, which endures and does not sink but falls, and sees how its allies on the left suffer the punishment of going disunited and being in electoral decline. In Asturias, Podemos has lost three deputies and 37,000 votes.
With the exception of the absolute majority in Castilla-La Mancha, the Socialists do not have any good news, with losses of a symbolic nature such as the Mayor's Office of Seville, and the fate that affects the rest of the provincial capitals is reproduced in the capital of Andalusia, with very bulky favorable results to the PP, as in Córdoba, Cádiz or Málaga. In the whole of Andalusia, the PP leads the PSOE by just over 5% and 200,000 votes, but the PSOE retains a majority of councilors, around 3,700, five hundred more than the PP.
The Socialists lose the Valencian Community and five others, and are not even the most voted force in Barcelona. The left has a long reflection ahead of it. The PSOE must assume the error of an electoral campaign that became national with the president announcing at the rallies government actions perceived as electoral promises. But where reflection and action seem most urgent is in the rest of the parties of the left bloc. Divided, confronted, with multiple brands throughout the national territory, their decline in these elections is clear and the danger of reproducing these results in the general elections and reducing the possibilities of reissuing the coalition government, evident.
Among the news that leaves this day is the advance of Bildu on the PNV in the global calculation, and is in first place in Vitoria, probably benefited by the prominence that on a national scale had during the first week of the electoral campaign on account of the lists. The victory of Xavier Trias in Barcelona has resolved against the current mayor, Ada Colau, the plebiscite in which these municipal elections became. Beyond the battle of Barcelona, the PSC consolidates its growth in Catalonia and ERC narrowly loses the second position in favor of Junts.
The good results of the PP in Madrid, Andalusia and Valencia mean for Feijóo a boost to his national leadership and at the same time place the president of the PP before the need to set a criterion with relevant political decisions in those places where the votes of Vox are necessary to govern. The ambiguities of Feijóo at that point have their days numbered, as are the possibilities of governing without Vox in Valencia, Aragon or the Balearic Islands.
The PP has postponed for a long time the debate that today has on the table and that also affects the strategy of the party: two territorial leaders have achieved an absolute majority. The cycle that Moreno Bonilla began fleeing the Vox model with an absolute majority a year ago was consolidated in the municipal, while Isabel Díaz Ayuso has obtained hers by mimicking Vox. The question is what path the party president will decide to follow in the second part of the electoral cycle.
