Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday called an early general election for July 23 in a surprise move after his Socialist party took a serious battering in local and regional elections.
Prior to Sunday's debacle, Sanchez had insisted that he would ride out his four-year term with leftist government coalition partner United We Can, indicating that a election would be held in December.But the outcome of the local and regional votes quickly changed things.
Sanchez said he had spoken to King Felipe VI and would hold a special Cabinet meeting later Monday to dissolve parliament. The date chosen for the early election comes in the middle of Spain's summer holiday period, with many people likely to be away from their voting areas. In the municipal vote, the Popular Party, or PP, won 31.5% of votes compared with 28.2% for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, or PSOE. 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.
Vox, which is headed by Santiago Abascal, tripled its number of town councilors from the last municipal elections in 2019 after taking 7% of the vote on Sunday. The party's support will be key if the PP wants to form governments in six of the regions it won.PP also won an absolute majority in the region and capital of Madrid, with Isabel Diaz Ayuso being reelected as Madrid's regional president.
"I take full responsibility for the results and I think it is necessary to provide an answer and put our democratic mandate to the people," he said.
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