The PP gained two seats, while Vox gained 12, in effect a swap with the Cs, now a busted flush pretty much everywhere.

The PP gained two seats, while Vox gained 12, in effect a swap with the Cs, now a busted flush pretty much everywhere. | EFE

Andrew EdePalma15/02/2022 10:40
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They held an election in Castile and Leon because the president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco of the Partido Popular, feared a motion of no confidence which could have brought him down, a consequence of ending a coalition agreement with Ciudadanos. The PP gained two seats, while Vox gained 12, in effect a swap with the Cs, now a busted flush pretty much everywhere.

The PP and Vox can, if agreement is reached, form a majority; easier said than done, though. PSOE meanwhile lost seven seats, taken again in effect - by small regionalist parties. In the Balearics, reaction was as might have been anticipated. From the left, the parties of the coalition, it was an “ah but”.

Castile and Leon is not the same as the Balearics. Which it isn’t, but voting trends are voting trends, and the government parties here will know that full well. Francina Armengol and associates cannot ignore them.

The Balearic election, as mostly everywhere else, is fifteen months away. It would take much for the PP and Vox, sixteen and three seats in 2019, to attain a joint majority of 30. I doubt it, but it can’t be ruled out.

Were there to be such a scenario, however, it would be awkward for the PP’s Marga Prohens, aware that policies of José Ramón Bauzá proved unpopular and contributed to the PP’s election calamity in 2015.

And certain of these are Vox policies writ large and which do not reflect strong regionalist sympathies within the PP.