The Spanish right-wing Party Partido Popular (PP) secures its own majority in the Andalusian region’s parliament in Sunday’s election, according to preliminary results – which is another setback for Prime Minister and Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez.
With 90 percent of the votes counted, the PP had taken 57 of the 109 seats, more than doubling since the 2018 election.
Andalusia, Spain’s most populous region, was long in the hands of the Socialist Party PSOE. Now the party has to settle for 31 seats, the same as in 2018 when power passed to the PP thanks to support from the far-right party Vox.
This is the PSOE’s third straight loss in regional elections after Madrid (May 2021) and Castile and León (February). A hard blow for Pedro Sánchez, who with his left-wing coalition in government has been struggling with a crisis economy since Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has driven up global inflation.
The next national parliamentary elections are expected at the end of next year.