Politics

Conservative PP wins 5th absolute majority in Spain’s Galicia region

Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Feb 18 (EFE).- The conservative Popular Party (PP) won its fifth consecutive absolute majority in Sunday’s Galicia elections, winning 40 of the 75 deputies that make up the parliament of the region of northwest Spain.

With 98 percent of the votes counted, the PP lost two seats in the election compared to 2020, while the left-wing nationalist party BNG won 25 deputies, six more than in the previous legislature.

For their part, the Galician socialists (PSdeG-PSOE) lost five deputies and remained at nine, and Democracia Ourensana, who were running for the first time at the regional level, won one seat.

With these results, the leftist Podemos party, a former partner of the socialists in the coalition government in Spain, was left out of the Galician parliament, as was the leftist Sumar coalition, which was making its debut after its leap to national level in the last general election in July. The far-right Vox also did not find a place in Galicia, not winning any deputies.

Participation was around 67.30 percent, 18 percent more than in 2020.

In Galicia, traditionally governed by right-wing governments, 2.7 million voters were called to cast their vote, of which more than 475,000 live abroad, many of them in Latin America, which represents 18 percent of the Galician electoral roll.

On this occasion, 6.15 percent of voters abroad voted, five times more than in 2020.

Counting of the overseas vote will begin on Feb. 26 and the process could last until the 29th at the latest.

In Argentina, popularly considered the fifth Galician province (the region has four), nearly 200,000 Galicians were able to vote, followed by Cuba, with the most voters in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA) for this election with about 45,600.

Other countries with a significant number of Galicians are Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela and Switzerland.

This Sunday’s regional elections were the 12th since Galicia gained autonomy, and the PP has won most of them.

The party has governed Galicia since 1982, except in two terms (1987-1990 and 2005-2009), when the executive was chaired by socialists.

Then in 2009, PP’s leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo won by absolute majority, as he did in 2012, 2016 and 2020.

Current candidate Alfonso Rueda, who replaced Núñez Feijóo in 2022 when he assumed the party’s national presidency, achieved the challenge of revalidating that majority.

In view of Sunday’s results, Núñez Feijóo strengthened his leadership within his party and as leader of the main opposition group in Spain, in a polarized legislature.

This victory, in the opinion of the PP, is the “triumph of moderation and balance.”

Socialist candidate José Ramón Gómez Besteiro acknowledged that the results were not as expected.

“Our task was to make people understand the importance of these elections […] and the need for change, but we have not achieved it,” he said. EFE

nac-ajs/tw

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