Spain\u2019s conservative Popular Party (PP) secured a clear victory on Sunday, December 21, in a new regional election in Extremadura, western Spain, dealing a heavy blow to the governing Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who are reeling from a series of corruption scandals. The far right also strengthened its position.<\/p>\n
The PP won 43% of the vote, translating into 29 of the 65 seats in the regional parliament\u2014up from 28 in the outgoing assembly\u2014according to near-final official results with 99% of ballots counted.<\/p>\n
The outcome suggests that the traditional party of the Spanish right will need the backing of the far-right Vox party to form a government. Vox increased its representation sharply, rising from five to 11 seats with nearly 17% of the vote.<\/p>\n
The Socialist Party (PSOE), by contrast, lost 14 percentage points and 10 seats. With just under 26% of the vote, it will hold only 18 seats in a region long considered one of its strongholds and which it governed until 2023.<\/p>\n
The snap election in the largely agricultural region of around one million residents was the first to be held since a court ordered former transport minister Jose Luis Abalos\u2014a close ally of Sanchez\u2014to stand trial in a corruption case.<\/p>\n
Abalos, who is currently in pretrial detention, is accused of taking bribes in exchange for awarding public contracts. Prosecutors are seeking a 24-year prison sentence. The PSOE, which he joined in 1981, has expelled him from the party.<\/p>\n
Other corruption investigations have also targeted prime minister Sanchez\u2019s wife, as well as his elder brother, the composer and orchestra conductor David Sanchez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s conservative Popular Party (PP) secured a clear victory on Sunday, December 21, in a new regional election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[33,2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-648163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115762924297748423","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}