Spain Makes A Sharp Right Turn: Socialist's suffer biggest defeat ever at the hands of the Popular Party

Yesterday's local and regional elections resulted in a landslide victory for the right-wing Popular Party (Partido Popular, aka PP), and the biggest defeat in 30 years for the Socialist Party.

Elections for regional governments were held in 13 of Spain's 17 Autonomous Regions, and in none of them did the Socialist Party receive a majority vote. The PP will now govern in several Autonomous Regions, including Castilla-La Mancha where the Socialists have held power since Spain's return to Democracy in the late 1970s. Although they lost in Extremadura, too, the Socialists will probably be able to hold onto power there by forming a minority government with a minor party, United Left.

In the many provincial and municipal provincial government elections which were also held yesterday, the news was just as bad for the Socialist Party. This included losing control of Barcelona's and Seville's city halls, two other long time Socialist bastions.

In Guipúzcoa province and the city of San Sebastián, which are both located in the Autonomous Region known as the Basque Country, the recently formed separatist party Bildu obtained more votes than the Socialists to come in second to the more moderate Basque Nationalist Party (BNP). Before the election the courts had considered banning Bildu due to allegations of connections to the armed terrorist group ETA.

In Spain, voters can cast what is called a 'blank vote' - meaning none of the above. This year there were some 500,000 blank votes, or 2.54 per cent of all votes cast. This was the highest number of bank votes in Spain's history.

Despite the overwhelming loss, Spain's Prime Minister and Socialist Party leader announced he would not step down and has refused calls to move up national parliamentary elections, which are planned for spring 2012.

Of course these elections took place against the backdrop of large protests being held in city centers across the country. The elections may be over, but the protests are not.

Today's El País in English has a closer look at all of this: PP inflicts massive electoral defeat on Socialists.

And EuroNews has the following video report:

Hasta luego amig@s,

Carloz

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Zapatero’s Socialists Head for Vote Defeat in Spain as Protesters March

By Luis Jáspez - WikiMedia Commons

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialists are headed for defeat in local and regional elections after a week of street protests and sits- in against his policies, polls show.

Thirteen regions accounting for 60 percent of the economy and more than 8,000 municipalities hold elections on May 22. Polls show Zapatero’s Socialists will be defeated in most regions, including traditional strongholds, and may lose the city of Barcelona for the first time in three decades.

Support for the Socialists has flagged as Zapatero turned his back on traditional allies to push through wage reductions and spending cuts to fight the sovereign-debt crisis. The run-up to the vote, a year before polls to choose Zapatero’s successor, has seen demonstrations against budget cuts, bank bailouts and a 30-year-old democracy that protesters say safeguards entrenched interests.

“The conservative victory will be pretty much a punishment vote for the Socialists,” Alejandro Quiroga, a political science professor at Newcastle University in the U.K., said in a telephone interview. “It will add to the perception that this is a government on its way out.”

Protesters pitched tents in Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square on May 15 and have demonstrated there ever since. They are calling for changes to the electoral system to reduce the dominance of the two main parties and stem corruption, while opposing spending cuts and a youth unemployment rate of 45 percent. They also want to vote for lawmakers directly rather than for party lists, and propose scrapping the Senate, Spain’s upper house of Parliament. [...]

After the polls, the Socialist party will turn its attention to a leadership contest as Zapatero said last month he won’t seek a third term. Polls show the favorites are Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba and Defense Minister Carme Chacon. While the party has given a mixed response to the protests, Chacon said May 18 that she was “listening” to the protesters and some of their objectives are “not only reasonable but possible.”

Read the whole thing at Bloomberg.com.

I'd say I wish I could vote, but the choices look pretty dismal.

Carloz

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