Spanish prime minister calls early general election after battering in regional vote

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at an EU summit in Brussels, on March 24, 2023. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert / AP)

MADRID -

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday called an early general election for July 23 in a surprise move after his Socialist party took a serious battering in local and regional elections.

Prior to Sunday's debacle, Sanchez had insisted that he would ride out his four-year term with leftist government coalition partner United We Can, indicating that a election would be held in December.

• Download our app to get alerts to your device
• Get the latest newsletters right to your inbox

But the outcome of the local and regional votes quickly changed things.

"I have taken this decision given the results of the elections held yesterday," Sanchez said Monday from the Moncloa presidential palace.

The woes for Sanchez and his PSOE party come as Spain is due to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1.

Sanchez said he had spoken to King Felipe VI and would hold a special Cabinet meeting later Monday to dissolve parliament. The date chosen for the early election comes in the middle of Spain's summer holiday period, with many people likely to be away from their voting areas.

The local and regional elections on Sunday saw Spain taking a major swing to the right and made the leading opposition conservative Popular Party, or PP, the main political force in the country.

"This is unexpected," said Ignacio Jurado, a political scientist at Madrid's Carlos III University. "Sanchez is trying to short circuit the PP's rise as soon as possible."

In the municipal vote, the Popular Party, or PP, won 31.5% of votes compared with 28.2% for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, or PSOE. This was a 1.2 percentage point decrease for PSOE on 2019, but almost a nine point increase for the PP, which benefited from the collapse of the centrist Citizens party.

The PP, which is led by Alberto Nunez Feijoo, won in seven of the 12 regions contested and dominated in several regions previously won by PSOE including Valencia, Aragon and La Rioja. It remains to be seen how much the PP will be forced to rely on far-right party Vox to form local and regional governments.

Feijoo said at a news conference on Monday that the results expressed "the desire for change that exists in our society."

Vox, which is headed by Santiago Abascal, tripled its number of town councilors from the last municipal elections in 2019 after taking 7% of the vote on Sunday. The party's support will be key if the PP wants to form governments in six of the regions it won.

Abascal called on Feijoo to join together to defeat Sanchez in July.

PP also won an absolute majority in the region and capital of Madrid, with Isabel Diaz Ayuso being reelected as Madrid's regional president.

Spain's regional governments have enormous power and budgetary discretion over education, health, housing and policing

Sanchez said that although the elections Sunday were local and regional, the trend in the vote sent a message.

"I take full responsibility for the results and I think it is necessary to provide an answer and put our democratic mandate to the people," he said.

The poor showing by both by the Socialists and United We Can was immediately taken as a dire assessment of public feeling towards the ruling leftist coalition. The new leftist group Sumar, headed by Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz, also failed to live up to expectations.

"Sanchez reacts to a shock with another shock," Spanish political expert Sandra Leon said. "He also avoids deterioration of his party in two ways: the costs of internal division in the government until December and the division with PSOE party barons in the regions."

She said the announcement will force the parties to the left of the Socialists -- United We Can and Sumar -- to regroup fast.

Although the coalition government has shepherded Spain out of the COVID-19 pandemic, made the economy among the fastest growing in the EU and introduced several ground-breaking laws, something was sorely lacking.

"The message received last night was clear: Things have to be done differently," Diaz tweeted.

Feijoo has capitalized on criticizing the coalition's reliance to stay in power through support from separatist parties such as the Republican Left in Catalonia and the Basque region's EH Bildu.

Sanchez has been in office since 2018, when he brought and won a no-confidence vote against the PP prime minister at the time, Mariano Rajoy. He then led the Socialists to a general election victory in 2019 before forming Spain's first coalition government in four decades.