The conservative Popular Party (PP) won its fifth consecutive absolute majority in Sunday’s Galicia elections, winning 40 of the 75 deputies that make up the parliament of the region of northwest Spain.
With 98% of the votes counted, the PP lost two seats in the election compared to 2020, while the left-wing nationalist party BNG won 25 deputies, six more than in the previous legislature, Euractiv’s partner EFE reported.
For their part, the Galician socialists (PSdeG-PSOE) lost five deputies, retaining nine, and Democracia Ourensana, which was running for the first time at the regional level, won one seat.
With these results, the leftist Podemos party, a former partner of the socialists in the coalition government in Spain, was left out of the Galician parliament, as was the leftist Sumar coalition, which was making its regional debut after its grand entrance at the national level in the last general election in July. The far-right Vox party also did not find a place in Galicia, not winning any deputies.
Participation was around 67.30%, 18% more than in 2020.
In Galicia, traditionally governed by right-wing governments, 2.7 million voters were called to cast their vote, of which more than 475,000 live abroad, many of them in Latin America, representing 18% of the Galician electoral roll.
On this occasion, 6.15% of voters abroad voted, five times more than in 2020.
Counting of the overseas vote will begin on 26 February, and the process could last until the 29th at the latest.
This Sunday’s regional elections were the 12th since Galicia gained autonomy, and the PP has won most of them. The party has governed Galicia since 1982, except in two terms (1987-1990 and 2005-2009), when socialists chaired the executive.
Then, in 2009, PP’s leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo won by absolute majority, as he did in 2012, 2016 and 2020.
Current candidate Alfonso Rueda, who replaced Núñez Feijóo in 2022 when he assumed the party’s national presidency, achieved the challenge of revalidating that majority. Given Sunday’s results, Núñez Feijóo has strengthened his leadership within his party and as leader of the main opposition group in Spain in a polarised legislature.
In the opinion of the PP, this victory is the “triumph of moderation and balance.”
Socialist candidate José Ramón Gómez Besteiro acknowledged that the results were unexpected.
“Our task was to make people understand the importance of these elections […] and the need for change, but we have not achieved it,” he said.
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
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Source: euractiv.com