Spain votes in local polls that up pressure on PM

Madrid, May 28 (AFP/APP): Spaniards were voting Sunday in local and regional polls seen as a barometer for a year-end general election which surveys suggest Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will lose, heralding a return of the right.

The stakes are high for Sanchez, whose Socialist party governs the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.

Voters are casting ballots for mayors in 8,131 municipalities while also electing leaders and assemblies in 12 of Spain’s 17 regions — 10 of which are currently run by the Socialists.

Voting opened at 9:00 am (0700 GMT) with some 35.5 million people eligible for the local elections and 18.3 million for the regional elections. Balloting ends at 8:00 pm.

With no exit polls, initial results are due two hours later.

“Most of our citizens will vote positively… for what is important: for public healthcare, public education, and housing policies for our young people,” said Sanchez as he cast his ballot in Madrid.

If the left “exceeds expectations and manages to retain control of most regional governments in play… this would suggest the national elections will be very closely fought, and bode well for the left’s chances of staying in power”, Eurasia Group analyst Federico Santi said this week.

But if surveys — which forecast a shift to the right — prove correct, success at a regional level will provide opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), with the “momentum” he needs to win the end-of-year election, he said.

After casting his ballot, Feijoo urged people “to vote massively” and ensure the next government was a strong one.

“We have difficult years ahead of us but… the stronger the government, the stronger our democracy will be and the faster we will get out of the economic, institutional and social problems we have in our country,” he said.

Sunday’s elections find Sanchez, who has been in office since 2018, facing several obstacles: voter fatigue with his left-wing government, soaring inflation — even though Spain’s rate is lower than other EU nations — and falling purchasing power.