Andalusia wipe-out spells trouble for Spain’s Sánchez in 2027 election

MADRID — Spain’s flurry of regional elections over recent months — most crucially in Andalusia this Sunday — has delivered an ominous message to the ruling Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez ahead of next year’s general election.

As Spain’s most populous region, Andalusia was of particular importance, and the Socialists’ heavy defeat was a historic and humiliating blow for a party that once regarded it as one of its strongholds.

The conservative People’s Party, led by Andalusian regional President Juanma Moreno, was the clear winner on Sunday, but it lost its parliamentary majority.

That is also of national significance because the PP will probably have to rule with support from the far-right Vox party. This PP-Vox tie-up has happened in other recent regional elections and could well push the conservatives toward a more right-wing course ahead of the general election.

According to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, the PP leads the field nationally at 32 percent, with the Socialists at 28 percent. Vox is in third place with 18 percent.

Here are five takeaways from Andalusia:

This was a disaster for the Socialists

Polls had long predicted a bruising result for Sánchez’s party, which registered its worst-ever result in the region. Andalusia was for decades the Socialists’ electoral stronghold until they lost control of it in 2018. Now, having slipped to 28 seats in the 109-seat parliament, the party is a humbled opposition force. The PP won 53 seats.

There are some clear reasons for the Socialists’ demise. A train collision that killed 46 people in the province of Córdoba in January, and which threw southern rail links into chaos for weeks, was a major issue during the campaign, and the right repeatedly pointed out the central government’s responsibility for the railway system.

Meanwhile, the choice of María José Montero as the Socialist candidate came under scrutiny. Originally from Seville, her Andalusian credentials were not in doubt, but having left her post as deputy prime minister in order to run, she was tainted by her association with the Sánchez government.

Guillermo Fernández-Vázquez, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid, believed the strategy of using a former minister in the election was a serious error. “This allowed the PP to pretty much ignore the candidate herself and go face-to-face with the central government,” which has been struggling in polls, he said.

And it was the latest in a chain of poor Socialist results

Andalusia marked the end of an electoral cycle. It was the last of four regional elections over the past six months, following ballots in Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León. In each case, the PP was already governing,, and ,it won, while the Socialists lost ground in three of those four regions.

Several months ago, speculation was rife that a series of defeats could pile enough pressure on Sánchez to force him to consider his future or call a general election, particularly given the corruption scandals swirling around his party.

The conservative People’s Party, led by Andalusian regional President Juanma Moreno, was the clear winner on Sunday, but it lost its parliamentary majority. | Fran Santiago/Getty Images

However, there is no sign that Sánchez will make such a move, and he appears determined to see out the legislature until 2027 and fight on.

“What’s happening in Spain is not normal, it’s unusual to have a leftist coalition government,” Sánchez told supporters in Andalusia shortly before the election. “I’m halfway through this job and I’ve been here eight years.”

He will seek consolation in the fact that, after a similarly poor result in 2022, the Socialist vote in the southern region increased substantially in the following year’s general election. He and his party will also take heart from the PP’s loss of its majority, which lends further credence to the warning Sánchez has been issuing to Spaniards for several years: that the conservatives need the far right to govern.

The conservatives aren’t happy either

This is a bitterly disappointing result for Moreno. While the PP confirmed its overall dominance in Andalusia, winning in all eight provinces, the loss of five seats and its parliamentary majority by a narrow margin is a blow. “It’s an overwhelming victory, but it’s not enough,” said José Manuel Trujillo, a political scientist at Seville’s Pablo de Olavide University. Trujillo largely attributed the loss of seats to voters to the PP’s left and right, who had not turned out four years ago, but did so this time.

The Andalusian president has become the most prominent moderate voice in the PP, marking out a centrist path away from the theatrics of Madrid. Going into this election, Moreno’s vía andaluza (“Andalusian way”) was being touted as a possible strategy for PP national leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo to replicate, who has struggled to find a clear position on the political spectrum.

But, with Moreno falling short, attention will shift to the approach of the conservatives’ other high-profile regional baron, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the hard-line president of Madrid. She has won a parliamentary majority with a very different style from Moreno’s: by looking to her right and occupying Vox’s populist territory. Ayuso congratulated her Andalusian counterpart on his “absolute defeat of Pedro Sánchez”, but many will see this as vindication of her own uncompromising style.

Feijóo will now have to work out how to best harness these rival camps in the election build-up.

Far-right Vox party is celebrating

Andalusia is the region where the far-right party first made a tangible impact on the Spanish political landscape by winning seats in the region’s parliament in 2018. Although it only gained one new seat on Sunday, triggering some speculation that the party might have reached its electoral ceiling, Vox is poised to enter talks with Moreno as he seeks to form a new administration — unless he can engineer an unlikely deal with the left.

So far, Moreno has said he plans to govern alone, given how close he is to a majority. However, even if he does not form a coalition with Vox, he is expected to attempt to secure the party’s parliamentary support.

“The negotiations are going to be very tough,” said Fernández-Vázquez. “Vox is going to try and reach deals in policy areas that are important to them.”

The ultra-nationalists have said they want to introduce the concept of “national priority”, which they say would give Spaniards access to public services and benefits ahead of foreigners. The PP has already signed off on the controversial and still vague policy in other regions where it needs Vox’s support. For Moreno, who has dismissed the national priority idea as “overblown” and praised the contribution of immigrants to the Andalusian economy, this could be a thorny issue.

Not all doom and gloom on the left

While the Socialists performed woefully, there was hope elsewhere on the left.

Adelante Andalucía, a far-left force with a local focus, made the most gains of any party, picking up six seats. With a total of eight, it is still some distance behind Vox with 15 seats, but its candidate, José Ignacio García, outlined the party’s lofty ambitions. “We have laid down the foundations to kick the right out of Andalusia,” he said.

Adelante Andalucía managed to appeal to left-wing voters wary of the baggage and links to Madrid of other left-wing parties, said Trujillo.  

However, its success came at the expense of Por Andalucía, a left-wing coalition that includes Sumar, Podemos and the United Left (IU). This was yet another underwhelming result for Sumar, the junior partner in Sánchez’s government.

Its electoral difficulties will worry him as he looks ahead to the 2027 general election and scans the left for potential parliamentary partners who could help him remain in power.