Spain: Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party threatened to lose in Andalusia

Andalusia, Spain’s most populous region, famous for its Mediterranean beaches and historic cities like Seville, Granada and Cordoba, was ruled by socialists for almost forty years, until 2019.

Unfavorable polls

Polls suggest that the right-wing People’s Party (PP), which won elections in Andalusia in 2019, will again inflict a defeat on the socialists.

But questions remain as to whether the current right-wing regional president Juan Manuel Moreno, a candidate for his own succession, will retain his current majority in the Andalusian parliament which has 109 seats.

Obtaining an absolute majority would allow him to do without the support of the far-right Vox party. Otherwise, Vox would become a kingmaker, as was the case during recent regional elections in Extremadura (December), Aragon (February) and Castile and León (March), three regions where the PP won, without however obtaining the absolute majority.

After the resounding defeats suffered by the socialists in these three regions, another electoral debacle in Andalusia would be particularly painful for Pedro Sanchez, especially since the socialist candidate MarÃa Jesús Montero was number 2 in his government until the end of the month of March.

Andalusia, almost 18% of the country’s population

Turnout at 2:00 p.m. (12:00 GMT) stood at 37.2%, three percentage points more than in the last elections in 2022, when the Socialists recorded their worst result in Andalusia. MarÃa Jesús Montero urged Andalusians to go to the polling stations before they close at 8:00 p.m. The socialists fear that low participation could be detrimental to them.

The right-wing regional president Juan Manuel Moreno, for his part, insisted on the stakes of this election on a national scale, in a region which has almost nine million inhabitants, or almost 18% of the total population of the country. “What is happening in Andalusia clearly has repercussions on other things,” he said.