Pablo Iglesias lends his support to the Ahora Madrid party in Spain's capital. Demotix/Marcos del Mazo. Some rights reserved.Yesterday’s Spanish municipal and regional elections confirmed what the opinion polls have shown for the past year: the electorate is in a flux, and the voters punished the old parties and rewarded the new ones.
The results of the elections were no big surprise. The conservative Partido Popular (PP) were the biggest losers, dropping from 37% to 27%. They no longer have an outright majority in any of the regions and are forced to enter into alliances and coalitions even in their stronghold Castilla-La Mancha, where it is now up to the socialists (PSOE) and Podemos to form an anti-PP alliance. Likewise in Valencia, the banana republic of Spain, there is now a majority against the PP.
The size of the anti-PP vote, and the turn to the left, is perhaps the biggest story of the elections. Across Spain, the left and the centre-left got more votes and more seats than the right-wing PP. The story that PP have been telling all night is that they came first and are the biggest party. They are indeed still the biggest party, with PSOE just behind at 25% (dropping 2% from the last local elections in 2011). The problem for PP is that they are toxic, and the other parties will be hesitant to prop up local PP administrations. That then leaves the challenge of forming coalitions of the left and the centre-left.
