2 hours ago
Spain’s beleaguered prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, faces a key test on Sunday when voters in the south-western region of Extremadura cast their ballots in the first major election to be held since a series of corruption and sexual harassment allegations enveloped his inner circle, his party and his administration.
Extremadura, once a stronghold of Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), has been in the hands of the conservative People’s party (PP) since 2023, when the latter managed to form a short-lived coalition government with the far-right Vox party, despite finishing just behind the socialists.
Sunday’s snap election was called two months ago by the regional president, María Guardiola, after the PSOE and her erstwhile allies in Vox voted down next year’s budget.
Though ostensibly a regional affair, the results of Sunday’s election will be felt well beyond Extremadura. Politicians and pundits will be scrutinising the poll to determine the extent of the damage that the allegations of recent weeks and months have inflicted on the PSOE, while the PP is likely to be forced, once again, to cut a deal with Vox to govern.
The socialist candidate, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, is facing trial on charges of influence-peddling and abuse of office, over allegations that he helped create a tailormade job for the prime minister’s brother, David Sánchez, eight years ago. The trial springs from a complaint made by Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled trade union with far-right links that has a long history of using the courts to pursue those it deems detrimental to Spain’s democratic interests.
Gallardo and David Sánchez – who faces the same charges – have both denied any wrongdoing. The case is one of many that have dented the prime minister, who came to power in 2018 promising an end to corruption.
Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has been accused of using her influence to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course she ran and of using state funds to pay her assistant for help with personal matters. She has denied any wrongdoing, and the current judicial investigation is also the result of a complaint from Manos Limpias.
In June, Sánchez ordered his righthand man, Santos Cerdán, to step down as PSOE’s organisational secretary after a supreme court judge found “firm evidence” of Cerdán’s possible involvement in taking kickbacks on public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid pandemic. The former PSOE transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, is also accused of involvement in the illegal enterprise, as is Ábalos’s former aide, Koldo García. Cerdán, Ábalos and García all deny any wrongdoing and insist they are innocent.
In recent weeks, the PSOE has been accused of failing to tackle sexual harassment by senior men in the party. The allegations are particularly damning given Sánchez’s insistence, when he entered the Moncloa palace seven years ago, that the PSOE was “unmistakably committed to equality” and to reflecting recent changes in Spanish society.
The PP, unsurprisingly, has seized on the situation. Its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has said he hopes Sunday’s regional election will set off a “domino effect” that will topple Sánchez and thereby rescue Spain from what he terms a “swamp of corruption, sexism and extortion”.
The polls suggest Guardiola will struggle to win an absolute majority and will have to enter into a pact with Vox – something she was initially very unwilling to do in 2023.
Vox pulled out of five PP-led coalition regional governments last year – including Extremadura – because of disagreements over migration policy. But it will be seeking to extract the highest possible price for its support should Guardiola prove unable to govern alone.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III university, said that while it was to soon to be able to gauge the damage done to the PSOE by the recent sexual harassment cases, the polls pointed to a generalised shift.
“This is the first election since the European ones in 2024 and I think we’re going to see a trend in Extremadura that’s happening right across Spain,” he said. “And that’s a lot of growth for the right bloc: we’re going to see PP and Vox attracting around 55% to 57% of the vote – and that really is a lot.”
Simón said Sunday’s poll – which will be followed by elections in Aragón, Castilla y León and Andalucía over the next few months – would herald a nationwide setback for the PSOE as Sánchez tries to hold out until the end of the current legislature in 2027.
“This is going to spill over into other territories where the demoralisation will continue to spread among leftwing voters, and that will generate more and more pressure on Moncloa,” he said.
