Spain PP Loses Majority in Andalusia, Needs Far-Right Vox Support

Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) won Sunday’s regional election in Andalucía but lost its absolute majority, forcing it to rely on the support or abstention of the far-right Vox party to form a new government.

The election in Spain’s most populous region serves as a barometer of wider electoral opinion ahead of next year’s general election. The Socialists slumped to an all-time low, while Vox picked up one additional seat.

The PP took 53 seats in the 109-seat regional parliament, two seats short of an absolute majority and a decline of five from the 58 seats it won in the 2022 election.

The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), led nationally by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, dropped from 30 seats to 28. Vox climbed from 14 to 15 seats. The left-wing Adelante Andalucía rose from two to six seats, and the leftist coalition Por Andalucía held its five seats from four years ago.

Sunday’s results mean regional PP leader Juan Manuel “Juanma” Moreno must negotiate his return to office with Vox, something he sought to avoid during the campaign.

“I’m going to try to govern alone and I’ll work as hard as possible to so there are no constraints or conditions from Vox,” he told Cadena Ser radio last week. “I’ve said very clearly that I have no interest in governing with Vox. None at all.”

Moreno has criticized Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy, which would favor Spaniards over foreign-born people for housing and benefits. Although Moreno dismissed it as “an empty slogan,” Vox has made the policy a key part of coalition agreements it recently reached with the PP in regions such as Extremadura and Aragón.

Speaking after the results came in, Moreno said his party had come very close to another absolute majority but acknowledged the arithmetic had always been complicated.

“It’s true that we didn’t get top marks we were hoping for, but we’ve still achieved an outstanding grade,” he said. Moreno also insisted he had received a mandate “to continue transforming Andalucía” and promised “four more years of reforms and stability.”

The PP, which could now face months of negotiations with Vox to form a new government, described its win as a “resounding victory” and said Sánchez’s Socialists had suffered “a catastrophic result.” The prime minister congratulated Moreno but said his party would “continue to drive the kind of social and political advances that improve people’s lives.”

Vox leader Santiago Abascal called on Moreno to heed the voices of the 576,000 Andalucíans who backed his party and thereby showed they “believe in national priority … and believe that regional governments can work to stop the migrant invasion.”

Polls leading up to next year’s general election suggest the PP is on course to defeat Sánchez, whose inner circle, party and administration have been battered by a series of corruption scandals. However, the conservatives are expected to fall short of an absolute majority and would likely need Vox’s support to govern at the national level.