Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a media conference on the final day of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Madrid, Spain, on June 30, 2022. Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro S. Nchez has called for an early general election on July 23. A day after his Socialist party took a serious battering in local and regional elections, S. Nchez announced his surprise decision Monday. prior to Sunday's debacle, S nchez had said he would ride out his four-year term with leftist government coalition partner United We Can, indicating that an election would be held in December.
The woes for S. Nchez and his PSOE party come as Spain is expected to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1.
S nchez said he had spoken to King Felipe VI and was holding a special cabinet meeting later Monday to dissolve the parliament.
I have taken this decision given the results of the elections held yesterday, Mr. Nchez said in a statement.
Spain's local and regional elections took a significant turn to the right and made the leading opposition right wing popular party, the PP, the main political force in the country.
This is unexpected, said Ignacio Jurado, a political scientist at Madrid's Carlos III University. S nchez is trying to short circuit the PP s rise as soon as possible. In the municipal vote, the popular party, or PP, won 31.5% of the votes, compared to 28.2% for the Socialists. This was a 1.2 percentage point decrease for PSOE on 2019, but almost a nine-point increase for the PP, which benefited from the collapse of the centrist Citizens Party.
The PP won in seven of the 12 regions contested and dominated in several regions previously won by PSOE, including Valencia, Aragon and La Rioja. To form a regional government, it remains to be seen whether PP will be relying on far-right party Vox.
Spain's regional governments have enormous power and budgetary discretion over education, health, housing and policing.