Carlos Perez Gil |
Madrid (EFE).- Twelve autonomous communities and 8,131 town halls will draw the new electoral map in Spain on May 28, in the first big appointment with the polls this year, which will be completed with the general ones, predictably, in December.
The first fight between the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez and the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo will determine if the Socialists maintain the primacy at the local and regional level that they achieved four years ago or if the popular ones take it over as happened in 2015 and 2011.
Municipal elections
At the 28M appointment, 35.1 million voters are called to vote, 243,446 more than in 2019, who, at the municipal level, will decide the distribution of the 67,152 councillors, 142 more than in the previous elections.
At present, the PSOE is the party with the most local power in terms of number of councilors (22,341, compared to 20,336 for the PP) and global population governed (more than 8 million people in relation to the popular ones).
Regarding the number of mayors, the 2 parties have around 2,800 governed municipalities, although the Socialists have more control in the provincial capitals and in the other municipalities with more inhabitants.
The PSOE governs 22 provincial capitals, including Seville, Granada, Huelva, Palma, Las Palmas, Toledo, Valladolid, León, Burgos, Cáceres, A Coruña, Castellón, Logroño or Murcia, seized from the PP in a motion of no confidence in 2021 .
The PP has 12, such as Madrid, Zaragoza, Teruel, Alicante, Málaga, Córdoba, Almería, Salamanca or Oviedo, as well as Ceuta.
Of the 15 municipalities with the largest population that are not provincial capitals, the PSOE controls 13 -Alcalá de Henares, Alcorcón, Badalona, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Gijón, Sabadello or Vigo-, compared to one of the PP -Cartagena-.
The third party that obtained the most councilors in 2019, with 2,787, was Ciudadanos, which is now facing a delicate situation, which has led it to reduce its municipal candidacies by more than half -from 1,900 to 800-.
Cs maintains 173 mayors, including Ciudad Real and Palencia, in addition to the vice mayor in Madrid, and is in 400 government agreements, although in some important squares it lost presence due to the departure of its mayors or, as in the case of Melilla, because its president was expelled from the party.
In 2019, Podemos lost a good part of the mayoralties in important municipalities that it reached thanks to coalitions and political tides -Madrid, Zaragoza or A Coruña-.
It faces the new electoral appointment with the novelty of the irruption, with a view to the general elections, of the Sumar platform led by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, in alliance with parties such as Compromís or Más Madrid, rivals of the 28M purple formation, or the mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau.
Compared to the previous elections, the polls give better results to Vox, which maintains 490 councilors, although with just half a dozen mayoralties, after leaving governments such as those of El Ejido or Roquetas (Almería).
Unlike Cs, those of Santiago Abascal have doubled their candidacies, with 1,936, while in 2019 they competed in 752 municipalities.
In the Basque Country, the PNV arrives with control of the three capitals, while in Catalonia, ERC has the mayoralties of Tarragona and Lleida and Junts, that of Girona.
regional elections
Apart from the municipalities, the elections are going to renew the distribution of regional power, with the PSOE also having an advantage over the popular ones, from whom the autonomous hegemony was seized four years ago.
Voters are called to vote in 12 autonomous communities, as there are none in the historical ones -Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia, with their own calendar-, nor in Castilla y León, held in advance in February 2022 and which led to a coalition between PP and Vox.
Of those at stake, there are the nine controlled by the PSOE -Asturias, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura alone, and Aragón, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the Valencian Community, Navarra and La Rioja in coalition-, as well as Cantabria, where it is government partner with regionalist Miguel Ángel Revilla.
Of the five bastions that the PP manages, there will be ballot boxes in two, in the Community of Madrid and in the Region of Murcia, where it does not have an absolute majority.
The 28M electoral photo will be completed with the elections that will take place in the island councils of the Canary Islands; in the Island Councils of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza; in the General Assemblies of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa; in the Councils of Navarre and in the General Council of Aran.