The Popular Party wins in Andalusia but depends on Vox. Psoe resists
The ultra-right force Vox stood at 13.8% of the vote and 15 seats, just one more than it controlled. But just enough to win the keys to governability, strengthening the negotiating role even of leader Santago Abascal at national level
The Partido Popular of outgoing governor Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla won the regional elections in Andalusia, but without confirming an absolute majority. The Pp stopped at 41.5% of the votes and 53 seats, five less than the 58 it controlled, two away from a majority of the 109 deputies in the Andalusian Chamber.
The result forces Moreno Bonilla, 56, in his third term, to seek the support of the ultra-right. A scenario already seen in recent months in Extremadura, Aragon and Castile and Leon, where the Pp won but had to come to terms with Vox. And which the governor had tried to avoid throughout the election campaign, displaying a moderate and centrist profile compared to the radical right, determined to impose the 'national priority' in access to aid and public services to immigrants also in the southern region of Spain, Europe's frontier.
The Psoe, with the former vice-premier of finance candidate Maria Jesus Montero, obtains 22.8% of the votes and 28 deputies out of the 30 in the past legislature, representing the Socialists' worst performance in the former fiefdom, governed for almost 40 years and lost in 2018. In one of the eight Andalusian provinces, that of Almeria, land of immigrants and agrarian labourers, the Socialists slip as the third political force, behind Vox.
No 'comeback' for socialists
In Spain's most populous region, the vote is being read as a first round ahead of general elections in 2027. There has not been the hoped-for 'remontada' of the Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who bet on the party's No. 2, and until a few weeks ago his right-hand man, for the mission to lift the fortunes of the Psoe in the region besieged by the crisis and corruption trials of former leaders.
The ultra-right Vox force stood at 13.8% of the vote and 15 seats, just one more than it controlled. But just enough to win the keys to governability, strengthening the negotiating role even of leader Santago Abascal at the national level. "Vox is decisive for the fourth time in the last four regional elections in Spain. We have succeeded in Extremadura, Aragon, Castile and Leon, and now in Andalusia,' celebrated Abascal, pointing out the loss 'in votes and seats of the Pp and Psoe'.
