By Graham Keeley<\/p>\n
MADRID, May 18 (Reuters) – The conservative People’s Party won the election in Spain’s southern Andalusia region but lost its absolute majority, results showed \u200con Monday, forcing it to forge an alliance with far-right party Vox \u200cto remain in power.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s vote in the most populous Spanish region was a test of political strength ahead \u200bof a national election expected to be held next year. The same right-wing coalition hopes to oust Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez from the national executive’s helm after nine years of leftist rule.<\/p>\n
In the Andalusia campaign, issues including public health shortcomings, drug trafficking and unemployment \u200cplayed heavily.<\/p>\n
The PP garnered the \u2060largest share of the vote with 53 seats, down from 58 in 2022 and below the absolute majority of 55 in the 109-seat \u2060regional parliament.<\/p>\n
The Socialists shed two seats for a total of 28 – the party’s worst-ever showing in its erstwhile electoral stronghold – while Vox obtained 15 seats, up from 14 in the last \u200belection.<\/p>\n
Left-wing regionalist \u200bparty Adelante Andalucia surged to eight seats \u200bfrom the two it got four \u200cyears ago, while the leftist alliance Por Andalucia kept the same five seats it already had.<\/p>\n
“We said it would be complicated. We have fallen short,” said regional leader Juanma Moreno of the PP, who had campaigned on the promise of a moderate government without Vox.<\/p>\n
The PP has already formed coalition pacts with Vox in the regions of Extremadura \u200cand Aragon and is likely to do so \u200bin Castile and Leon in coming weeks.<\/p>\n
The Socialist candidate \u200bMaria Jesus Montero – who had until \u200bnow served as the country’s Budget Minister and Sanchez’s first deputy – \u200cacknowledged the bad results and vowed her \u200bparty would learn from \u200bits mistakes.<\/p>\n
Andalusia was deeply Socialist until 2018, when anti-establishment anger led to a surge of support for Vox. For the first time in Spain’s democratic history, \u200bthe PP reached an agreement \u200cwith the far right to secure its backing, but the deal was \u200bundone in 2022 with the PP’s absolute majority.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Graham Keeley, Victoria Waldersee \u200band David Latona; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Graham Keeley MADRID, May 18 (Reuters) – The conservative People’s Party won the election in Spain’s southern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12766,1965,205,3207,17],"class_list":["post-25426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-absolute-majority","tag-andalusia","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-pp","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}