A boost for the leader of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, before the European elections in June. On Sunday February 18, the right-wing opposition retained control of Galicia, its traditional stronghold, following close regional elections in Spain.

The PP obtained 47.5% of the votes, which gives it an absolute majority, with 40 of the 75 seats in the regional parliament, according to the official results, made public Sunday evening on the basis of the counting of 95.5% of the ballots. vote.

The seemingly mundane assembly election in Galicia, a small region in northwest Spain, took on national significance as the stronghold of the right-wing opposition leader.

The term of the Galicia assembly normally ended in July but the People's Party, which has ruled the region since 2009, brought forward the voting date, hoping that a triumph would give momentum to its campaign for the European elections of June.

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The vote confirms polls which gave a large victory to the main party of the Spanish right, at the head of this region for 36 of the 42 years since Galicia has enjoyed autonomous status.

This is not surprising, because the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, 62, is Galician and led this region for 13 years before taking the helm of the party in 2022.

“Between disorder and stability, voters chose stability and, between unity and division, they intelligently chose unity,” welcomed the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, after the announcement results.

Debate on amnesty for Catalan separatists during the campaign

But the campaign was a series of setbacks for the PP. So much so that this party, which had won 42 of the 75 seats in the assembly in the previous elections, in 2020, was this time not guaranteed to retain the absolute majority and therefore power in the region, despite its lead in the surveys.

The major feature of the campaign was the strong surge of a left-wing nationalist party, the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), led by a charismatic woman, Ana Pontón, who aims to govern with the minority support of the socialists.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo carried out a complete change of discourse last weekend on the theme that has dominated Spanish political life since last summer: the left-wing government's plan to provide amnesty to Catalan separatists convicted of the aborted secession attempt of Catalonia in 2017.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo had made the total rejection of amnesty the central axis of his opposition to socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had to accept this measure – very controversial, including among socialists – in return for the support of deputies Catalan separatists at his inauguration for a new mandate at the head of government.

In comments that caused astonishment in his own camp, Alberto Núñez Feijóo said he was open to a measure of pardon, under certain conditions, for the Catalan separatists, going so far as to admit that he had had contacts with them and had examined the possibility of an amnesty last summer before ruling it out. Since then, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who wanted to give a national character to the campaign in Galicia around this debate on amnesty, has avoided the subject and is on the defensive.

The image of Alberto Núñez Feijóo suffered greatly from the poor performance of the PP in the legislative elections of July 23, which the party had certainly won but with an insufficient score to be able to form a government, while all the polls predicted a large victory for it. .

With AFP

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