• 28-M The PP overwhelms and the punishment of Sánchez erases the PSOE from the map
  • General Elections How do I request a postal vote?

The pacts of the PSOE in national key during this legislature have ended up conditioning their electoral results in the municipal sphere. Of the six new provincial capitals in which the party has options to govern from June 17, the date on which the municipalities are constituted, four of them are in Catalonia, including Barcelona at the moment.

The concessions of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez to those convicted of the illegal independence referendum of 2017, in particular the repeal of the crime of sedition and the criminal cheapening of embezzlement, have been assumed in this community as a mechanism of "deinflammation" of the conflict originated by the procés. Outside of there the Socialists will have to leave 17 consistories, among which is a square as symbolic for its acronym as Seville.

In Barcelona, the winner of the May 28 elections was the candidate of Junts, Xavier Trias, with 11 councilors, 10 short of an absolute majority. The representative of the PSOE and in second position after the scrutiny, Jaume Collboni, is trying to negotiate a tripartite left with the commons of the until now mayor Ada Colau and with ERC, which has already shown its preference to facilitate the investiture of "someone who is part of an independence party", without having yet curdled in any agreement.

While its chances of regaining the Catalan capital dissipate, the party based on Ferraz Street in Madrid has instead paved the way to govern in Lleida, Tarragona and Gerona, where they have been the most voted force. These three municipalities have had for the last four years acalds of separatist formations that have now suffered a notable loss of support at the polls.

What is already confirmed is that the socialist Maider Etxebarria will be the next councilor of Vitoria after the pact sealed with the PNV in exchange for facilitating the presidency of the Diputación de Guipúzcoa. In this way, they will leave without the Mayor's Office of the capital of the Basque Country the winner of last Sunday's elections, EH Bildu, which for the last four years has been one of Sánchez's strategic parliamentary partners.

And the PSOE could also conquer Palencia, where it has once again been the most voted party as in 2019, when an agreement between the PP and Ciudadanos left the baton of command in the orange formation, which had been the third list with more support. The key to the new consistory is now held by Vamos Palencia, a citizen movement "without ideology" that has launched a consultation among the neighbors to develop a government program that will require the candidates for mayor to deliver their votes.

Losses

The possible additions to the payroll of local power of the Socialists do not compensate in any case for their losses. Of the 24 municipal governments of which they have been part this legislature, at the expense of what happens in Barcelona (where they have been the minority partner), they will foreseeably only keep six at the expense of pacts with other parties: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, La Coruña, León, Jaén, Lugo and Cuenca.

In the PSOE they took for granted some losses after the elections of 28-M such as those of the mayors of Granada and Segovia. In Seville and Valencia, where they governed in coalition with Joan Ribó, of Compromís, they also came to fear that the sum of PP and Vox could unseat them, as finally happened, although their internal polls at least at the beginning of the electoral campaign gave them reason for optimism.

The city that did not enter at all in its forecasts of possible casualties was in Valladolid, where the polls agreed that Óscar Puente would obtain enough support to be able to continue governing with his partners during the last eight years, Valladolid Takes the Word. Nor was there the eviction of the Mayor's Office of Toledo of Milagros Tolón, to whom the demoscopy predicted even an absolute majority.

With the electoral debacle last Sunday, the Socialists have also lost the consistories of Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Burgos, Albacete, Castellón, Logroño, Huelva, Cáceres, Guadalajara, Ciudad Real and Huesca.

  • PSOE

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more