For Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the regional elections in the southwestern region of Extremadura were a final hurdle before a Christmas holiday that he could really use. In recent months, the news surrounding his Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) has been dominated by a corruption scandal involving three party prominents. Recently, a series of allegations of sexual harassment by party members were added – and criticism of the way in which the PSOE dealt with this.
The election in the region, which was loyal to the Social Democrats for years, but where Sánchez’s party was passed over in the coalition formation in 2023 despite election wins, was therefore seen in Spain as a crucial test for the prime minister. It is the first major election since the unrest began earlier this year. Would voters hold his party accountable for it?
Yes, according to Sunday evening election results. In the region where the PSOE never received less than 35 percent of the votes and 36 of the past 42 years was in power, the Social Democrats now dropped to just under 26 percent. The right-wing conservative Popular Party is the big winner with more than 43 percent, the radical right-wing Vox finishes in third place with 17 percent of the votes. Of the almost nine hundred thousand voters in Extremadura, barely 63 percent showed up. This is less than in the previous elections in May 2023, when more than 70 percent of those eligible to vote voted.
Voted down budget
In those 2023 elections, the PSOE became the largest, closely followed by the Partido Popular (PP). The latter then managed to form a coalition with Vox, thus sidelining the election winners.
However, the coalition did not last long. After a conflict between the two parties over the Spanish ‘dispersal law’ — on the reception of minor migrants per region — at the national level, Vox leader Santiago Abascal left all regional coalitions in July 2024. In addition to Extremadura, this involved coalitions in Valencia, Murcía, Castilla y León and Aragón.
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The Popular Party then decided not to hold new elections and to continue to govern alone, but knew that it would be complicated to implement budgets and complicated decisions with a minority government. That’s also where things went wrong in Extremadura. When the PSOE and Vox voted down the budget two months ago, regional president María Guardiola (PP) called early elections.
In the second election in Extremadura in which Guardiola was at the helm of the PP, she mainly competed against PSOE candidate Miguel Ángel Gallardo. His candidacy was controversial because he has to appear in court in March. He is accused of influence peddling and abuse of power for allegedly helping David Sánchez — the prime minister’s brother — get a job eight years ago. The lawsuit follows a complaint from Manos Limpias, a radical right-wing pseudo-union that agitates against everything that is left-wing. The corruption allegation against Pedro Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez also comes from this group.
That upcoming trial has not helped Gallardo — who, like David Sánchez, denies guilt. The PP convincingly passed the PSOE. Guardiola’s election win comes with the downside that she will need Vox again for a majority, as the polls already predicted. Guardiola is not looking forward to that: in 2023 she already had to overcome her resistance to enter into a coalition. The break forced by Abascal did not improve relations afterwards, nor did Vox’s opposition regarding the budget.
Although according to Sánchez the Spanish newspaper El Pais has decided to distance itself “from the national interpretation of this regional election”, this was the scenario the PSOE hoped for – after its own election win, of course. The Social Democrats are happy to use the PP’s dependence on Vox for a majority and the often turbulent relationship between the two parties to point out how unsettled it would be if those two parties were at the national helm together.
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