Faced With Electoral Wipeout, Spain’s Left Has to Unite
After gains for the Right in Sunday’s local and regional contests, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election. Yolanda Díaz’s left-wing Sumar project can get a good result — but only if the Left can overcome its damaging splits.
Yolanda Diaz speaking at a campaign event at the Alcazaba Cultural Center on May 21, 2023, in Merida, Spain. (Europa Press via Getty Images)
It’s been described by Spanish media as both political suicide and a stroke of tactical brilliance. Just hours after suffering heavy losses in Sunday’s local and regional polls, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a surprise general election for July 23.
This may seem counterintuitive. Sánchez’s ruling center-left Socialist Party (PSOE) had just lost six of the nine regional governments it controlled. Still worse were results for his junior coalition partner, the left-wing Unidas Podemos. It suffered a devastating collapse, in three regions (Madrid, the Canary Islands, and Valencia) falling short of the 5 percent threshold for representation.
Yet with the conservative Popular Party (PP) celebrating a sweeping victory, including in city halls across the former PSOE stronghold of Andalusia, Sánchez swiftly moved to upend the narrative. Rather than wait until December for the scheduled national poll, he announced surprise elections for this summer. He hopes to silence criticism within his party while also ensuring the national campaign will coincide with tricky coalition negotiations between PP and the far-right Vox in multiple regions.
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