MADRID-Spain votes Sunday in local and regional polls which will test Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s chances of remaining in power after a general election later this year. In office since 2018, the stakes are high for Sanchez, whose party governs the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy in coalition with the far-left Podemos.
Of the 12 regions voting on Sunday, 10 are governed by the Socialists either alone or as part of a coalition. These regional governments have been crucial allies for Sanchez, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when he relied on them to impose restrictions on social life. But the votes could mark “a turn to the right” whose magnitude could define the next general election, which has to be held by the end of the year, said Pablo Simon, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University.
The main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) -- which has for months topped opinion polls -- has framed Sunday’s elections as a referendum on Sanchez.
“It is only by voting that we can start to turn the page on ‘Sanchismo’,” PP head Alberto Nunez Feijoo said Tuesday, using a derogatory expression for Sanchez’s policies.
