MADRID, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Spain’s far-right Vox party doubled its seats in Sunday’s election in Aragon region, building on national gains and eating \u200binto the support of that area’s conservative leaders.<\/p>\n
The People’s Party, the biggest \u200cgroup in the regional government in Aragon, called the vote in December following failed budget negotiations, \u200choping to consolidate its power in the northeast.<\/p>\n
But the plan backfired, the PP lost seats, and it will now have to rely even more on the anti-immigration Vox movement to govern.<\/p>\n
Vox remains the third biggest party in the region, but increased its \u2060number of seats to 14 \u200cfrom seven with 18% of the vote, in line with a rise in support seen across Spain ahead of general elections \u200dthat must be held by August 2027.<\/p>\n
“What happened in Aragon shows the shape of things to come,” Eurointelligence analysts said in a newsletter on Monday. “There was indeed a momentum shift to \u200bthe right. But Vox was the main, and sole, beneficiary.”<\/p>\n
The People’s Party \u200clost two seats in Aragon compared with the last election in 2023 and now has 26 in the 67-seat regional assembly, leaving it further away from an overall majority.<\/p>\n
Vox will seek to become a junior partner in Aragon’s regional government, spokesperson Jose Antonio Fuster told a press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
PP national leader Alberto Nu\u00f1ez \u2060Feijoo said his party was prepared to negotiate \u200banything “within reason” without saying whether that included coalition \u200btalks.<\/p>\n
The Socialist party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez lost five seats, matching its worst result ever in the region.<\/p>\n
He leads a minority \u200dnational government that has \u2060been weakened by a series of corruption scandals in the past year.<\/p>\n
The Socialists had the support of around 27% of the national electorate, in a \u2060poll by 40dB in mid-January, behind the PP which had 31%. Vox had 18%.<\/p>\n
Vox also doubled \u200cits seats in the Extremadura region in December.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Paolo Laudani; \u200cediting by Charlie Devereux and Andrew Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Spain’s far-right Vox party doubled its seats in Sunday’s election in Aragon region,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[52654,2000,299,221948,12254,259,104,50863],"class_list":["post-753111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-aragon","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-people39s-party","tag-regional-government","tag-seats","tag-spain","tag-vox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116041718420183168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753111","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=753111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}