Andalucía win emboldens Spanish conservatives

The overwhelming victory of Spanish conservatives in Sunday’s election in Andalucía was an unprecedented result in the southern region which has sent a resounding message to their adversaries on both the left and the far right.

The Popular Party (PP) won an absolute majority by more than doubling its seats to 58 in the 109-seat regional parliament, meaning it can govern alone. The Socialist Party, for which Andalucía used to be its most dependable stronghold, came second with 30 seats, its worst result in the modern era.

“The staggering victory of the PP changes the political sociology of Andalucía and suggests a new political cycle in Spain,” said the Diario Sur newspaper.

In third place was the far-right Vox, which made slight gains to secure 14 seats. The biggest losses were suffered by the self-styled liberals of Ciudadanos, who lost all 21 of their seats, continuing a trend which appears to be pushing the party towards extinction.

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Ciudadanos had been the junior governing partner with the PP since the last election in 2018 and polls ahead of this vote had suggested that Vox might be in a position to force itself into a new coalition with the conservatives. On the campaign trail, the far-right party had voiced its determination to fill that role, as it has already done in the Castilla y León region, to the PP’s discomfort.

But the moderate rhetoric of the PP’s candidate, regional president Juanma Moreno Bonilla, paid off as he managed to win over voters by highlighting the successes of his nearly four years in power, including bringing Andalucía’s notoriously high jobless rate below 20 per cent for the first time since 2008.

Although Vox is now the third force in the Andalucía parliament, echoing its status in the national congress, this was a disappointment for the party. The southern region was where the far right first announced itself as an electoral force in 2018 and it was hoping to capitalise on discontent at spiralling fuel and energy costs, particularly in rural areas. Its campaign, which also frequently focused on cultural and social issues as it attacked feminism and defended traditions such as hunting and bullfighting, appears to have had limited appeal.

Vox’s relative failure also has repercussions for the left and Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez, who had until now been able to use the apparently unstoppable rise of the far right as a tool to mobilise voters across Spain.

“A weak Vox is bad news for Sánchez,” noted political commentator Marta García Aller. “The anti-fascist alert as an electoral argument disappears now that the PP has stopped [Vox] in Andalucía.”

This was an extremely sobering result for the Socialists, who have struggled to recover in the southern region since losing control of it in the previous election. With the parties to their left bitterly divided – the Podemos-backed Por Andalucía platform and the new Adelante Andalucía party won a modest seven seats between them – this election marked a massive swing to the right. Sánchez will be concerned that this could reflect a nationwide phenomenon, driven at least in part by dissatisfaction at his leftist coalition and its reliance on Catalan and Basque nationalists.

After a shock Socialist victory in Catalonia’s election in February 2021, the PP has now won three regional elections in a row and two of them, in Madrid and Andalucía, with ease.

The conservatives’ new leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who took office in April, could hardly have dreamed of a better result than this. It suggests the moderate brand of politics he shares with Moreno Bonilla is a winning one, while freeing his party from immediate reliance on the far right and giving it genuine hope as a general election looms next year.