CORRECTED: Spain’s Andalusia calls regional vote in test for PM

The leader of Spain’s most populous region, Andalusia, on Monday called a regional election for June 19 that could see far-right party Vox make gains and step further into the political mainstream.

The polls in the southern region will be a test for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority government ahead of a national election expected at the end of next year.

The conservative Popular Party (PP) has governed Andalusia, a traditional stronghold of the Socialists, since January 2019 in a minority with the support of Vox and market-friendly party Ciudadanos.

The government’s term expires in December but regional president Juanma Moreno said Andalusia needed a government with a fresh mandate to tackle soaring inflation and the economic impact of the Covid pandemic.

“There is no time to lose,” he said in a televised address, adding this will give the new administration time to prepare a budget for 2023 that tackles the “difficult time we are living in”.

Vox emerged as a kingmaker in Andalusia in the region’s last polls in December 2018, taking a surprise 12 seats in the first electoral success for the far right since Spain returned to democracy in the late 1970s.

Surveys suggest the PP will win the most seats in the next election but once again fall short of an absolute majority in the 109-seat assembly.

But it will likely be able to cobble together a majority.

Vox was sworn in as part of a regional coalition government for the first time earlier this month in the central Castilla y Leon region just north of Madrid where it now governs with the PP.

Founded in 2014, Vox’s platform includes a crackdown on immigration, restricting abortion and rolling back domestic violence laws.

Andalusia, home to 8.5 million people, has high unemployment and is one of the main arrival points in Spain for migrants crossing the Mediterranean.