Spain’s ruling party faces crunch regional poll amid corruption and harassment claims | Spain
Spain’s beleaguered prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, faces a major test on Sunday as voters in the southwestern region of Extremadura cast their votes in the first major election since a series of corruption and sexual harassment allegations have engulfed his inner circle, party and administration.
Extremadura, once a stronghold of Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), has been held by the conservative People’s Party (PP) since 2023, when it managed to form a short-lived coalition government with the far-right Vox party despite finishing just behind the socialists.
Sunday’s call for an early election was made two months ago by regional president María Guardiola, after the PSOE and its former allies in Vox rejected next year’s budget.
While ostensibly a regional affair, the consequences of Sunday’s election will be felt far beyond Extremadura. As politicians and pundits examine the survey to determine the extent of damage done to PSOE by the allegations of recent weeks and months, it is likely that the PP will once again have to reach an agreement with Vox for governance.
Socialist candidate Miguel Ángel Gallardo is on trial on charges of influence peddling and abuse of power over allegations that he helped create a private business for the prime minister’s brother, David Sánchez, eight years ago. The hearing stems from a complaint filed by Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled union with far-right connections that has a long history of using the courts to pursue cases it sees as damaging to Spain’s democratic interests.
Gallardo and David Sánchez, who face the same charges, have denied any wrongdoing. The case is one of many that have deeply hurt the prime minister, who came to power in 2018 promising to end corruption.
Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, is accused of using her influence to find sponsors for a university master’s course she was running and using state funds to pay her assistant to help with personal matters. He has denied any wrongdoing and the current criminal investigation is also the result of a complaint. Manos Limpias.
In June, Sánchez ordered his right-hand man Santos Cerdán to resign as PSOE’s organizing secretary after a high court judge found “conclusive evidence” of the possibility of Cerdán receiving kickbacks from public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid pandemic. Former PSOE transport minister José Luis Ábalos and Abalos’ former deputy Koldo García are also accused of participating in the illegal enterprise. Cerdán, Ábalos and García deny any wrongdoing and insist they are innocent.
In recent weeks the PSOE has been accused of failing to tackle sexual harassment by senior men in the party. The allegations are particularly damning given Sánchez’s insistence when he entered the Moncloa palace seven years ago that the PSOE was “clearly committed to equality” and reflected recent changes in Spanish society.
The PP, unsurprisingly, seized the situation. The group’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said he hoped Sunday’s regional elections would create a “domino effect” that would oust Sánchez and thus save Spain from the “swamp of corruption, sexism and extortion.”
Polls show Guardiola will struggle to gain an absolute majority and will have to enter into a deal with Vox; This is something Guardiola was initially very reluctant to do in 2023.
Vox withdrew from five PP-led coalition regional governments last year, including Extremadura, over disagreements over immigration policy. However, if it turns out that Guardiola cannot govern the country alone, he will try to get the highest price possible in return for his support.
III in Madrid. Pablo Simón, a political scientist at the University of Carlos, said it would soon be possible to measure the damage done to the PSOE by recent sexual harassment cases, but the surveys point to a general change.
“This is the first election since the European elections in 2024 and I think we will see in Extremadura a trend that is happening everywhere in Spain,” he said. “And that’s a lot of growth for the right-wing bloc: we’ll see the PP and Vox get about 55% to 57% of the vote – and that’s really a lot.”
Simón said Sunday’s poll, which will be followed by elections in Aragón, Castilla y León and Andalusia in the next few months, would herald a nationwide setback for the PSOE as Sánchez tries to hold out until the end of the current legislature in 2027.
“This will spread to other regions where demoralization among left-wing voters will continue to spread, and this will put more and more pressure on Moncloa,” he said.
