By Inti Landauro
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP), which elbowed out the ruling Socialists during local elections on Sunday, must ally with far-right group Vox to rule in various regions ahead of an end-of-year national vote.
With voters fed up at squabbling within Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government coalition, the opposition PP won outright in two of 12 regions where there were elections and could form a majority with Vox’s support in another six.
“Vox is here to stay and is here to be decisive in the construction of the alternative Spain needs,” its leader Santiago Abascal said in a speech early on Monday, adding he had not yet spoken to PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo.
The PP’s gains and Vox’s solid performance indicate the conservatives could unseat Sanchez and his Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) if they replicate the performance in a national parliamentary vote due by December.
The main setbacks for the Socialists came from losses in the Valencia, Aragon and Balearic Island regions, as well as in one of their most important fiefdoms, the southwestern region of Extremadura.
TWO-PARTY DOMINANCE
In the populous Madrid region, PP’s local leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso won a majority.
In big cities such as Valencia and Seville, where mayors were also elected, the count turned in favour of the PP, which also won an absolute majority in the city of Madrid.
Barcelona was an outlier among big cities, with a pro-independence party winning, though by such a narrow margin that it will need an agreement with the Socialists to unseat the current mayor, far-left Ada Colau.
Podemos, the Socialists’ far-left junior coalition partner, lost ground all over Spain, further weakening Sanchez’s position.
Sunday’s votes in 12 of Spain’s 17 regions showed a return to two-party dominance by the PSOE and PP after a decade of greater involvement by smaller parties such as the left-wing Podemos and centrist Ciudadanos.
The anti-immigrant and anti-separatist Vox was formed in 2013 and came third in the last national election.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Belen Carreno; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
