Spain: Sánchez creates surprise by calling early legislative

May 29, 2023

Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called early legislative elections for July 23 on Monday, a risky bet to try to stay in power after the Conservatives’ clear victory in a double municipal and regional ballot on Sunday.

Seriously, Mr. Sánchez announced, from the seat of the Spanish government, his decision to “dissolve Parliament and proceed with the calling of general elections”.

These elections will take place “on Sunday July 23”, i.e. during the semester of the Spanish presidency of the European Council which begins on July 1, added the socialist, in power since 2018.

“I took this decision in view of the results of yesterday’s elections”, said Mr. Sánchez, when the legislative elections were initially to be held at the end of the year, on a date which had not yet been announced. been fixed.

“As president of the government and as secretary general of the Socialist Party, I assume (responsibility for) the results and I think it is necessary to give an answer and to submit our democratic mandate to the popular will”, he said. he said again.

Weakened by the wear and tear of power and the decline in the purchasing power of the Spaniards, the socialist suffered a bitter setback during the municipal and regional elections on Sunday that the conservatives of the Popular Party (PP) had wanted to transform into an anti-Sánchez referendum. .

Overtaken for months in the polls by the PP, his image has also suffered from the recurring tensions between the Socialists and their partners in the Podemos (radical left) within the government. He was also criticized, sometimes even in his camp, for his alliances with the Catalan or Basque separatists.

“The message received last night was very clear, we have to do things differently,” commented the government’s number three, Communist Minister of Labor Yolanda Diaz, representative in the executive of the radical left, whose results were particularly bad on Sunday.

Of the 10 regions governed by the socialists, directly or as part of a coalition, which were at stake on Sunday, the People’s Party won six.

It has also strengthened itself in its two regional bastions of Madrid and Murcia (south-east) and has taken the town halls of Valencia and Seville (south), the third and fourth cities of the country, to the left.

“Spain wants, in my opinion, to turn the page” and has “begun a (political) renewal that will not stop”, launched the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on Monday, calling on the Spaniards to make him “the next head of government of Spain”.

The right-wing party will, however, need the support of Vox, a far-right party, to be able to govern in almost all of the regions it conquered on Sunday, but also – according to polls – at the national level after the legislative elections. they win them.

A problematic equation for the PP, which tries to project a moderate image and which has already been embarrassed by the positions taken by the ultranationalist formation in Castile and León, the only region where the two formations govern together.

According to analysts, the convening of these early legislative elections is yet another gamble by Pedro Sánchez, who came to power thanks to a motion of no confidence against the conservative Mariano Rajoy after the PP was condemned in court in a mega-trial for corruption.

“He is trying everything for everything” because “the only alternative was (to attend) six months of hemorrhage from the government”, analyzes Oriol Bartomeus, political scientist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

For Antonio Barroso, an analyst with the Teneo firm, the Socialist Prime Minister wants above all to try to “limit the damage” after the “disastrous results” of Sunday.

He also thinks he can take advantage of the fear of the far right and “mobilize left-wing voters against a potential PP-Vox government at national level”, just as these two formations will negotiate the formation of executives in several Spanish regions. , adds the expert.