Spain’s
conservatives forced to rely on far-right Vox party after losing majority in
Andalucía
People’s
party wins regional election but loses absolute majority, opening door to
possibly months of negotiations
Sam Jones
in Madrid
Mon 18
May 2026 09.48 BST
Spain’s
conservative People’s party (PP) won Sunday’s Andalucían regional election, but
lost its absolute majority, leaving it dependent on the support or abstention
of the far-right Vox party to form a new government.
After the
poll in Spain’s most populous region – which will serve as a barometer of wider
electoral opinion before next year’s general election – the socialists slumped
to an all-time low and Vox picked up one additional seat.
The PP
took 53 seats in the 109-seat regional parliament, leaving them two seats short
of an absolute majority and five down on the 58 they won at the last election
in 2022.
The
Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which is led nationally by the prime
minister, Pedro Sánchez, dropped from 30 seats to 28, while Vox climbed from 14
seats to 15. The leftwing Adelante Andalucía party climbed from two seats to
six, and the leftist coalition Por Andalucía held on to the five seats in won
four years ago.
Sunday’s
results mean that the regional PP leader, Juan Manuel “Juanma” Moreno, will
have to negotiate his return to office with Vox – something he was keen to
avoid during the campaign.
“I’m
going to try to govern alone and I’ll work as hard as possible to so there are
no constraints or conditions from Vox,” he told Cadena Ser radio last week.
“I’ve said very clearly that I have no interest in governing with Vox. None at
all.”
Moreno
has criticised the far-right party’s so-called “national priority” policy,
which would favour Spaniards over foreign-born people when it comes to housing
and benefits. Although Moreno dismissed it as “an empty slogan”, Vox has made
the policy a key part of the coalition agreements it has recently reentered
with the PP in regions such as Extremadura and Aragón.
Speaking
after the results came in, Moreno said his party had come very close to another
absolute majority, but that the arithmetic had always been complicated.
“It’s
true that we didn’t get top marks we were hoping for, but we’ve still achieved
and outstanding grade” he said. Moreno also insisted he had been given an
mandate “to continue transforming Andalucía”, and promised “four more years of
reforms and stability”.
The PP,
which could now face months of negotiations with Vox to form a new government,
described its win as a “resounding victory” and said Sánchez’s socialists had
suffered “a catastrophic result”. The prime minister congratulated Moreno but
said his party would “continue to drive the kind of social and political
advances that improve people’s lives”.
Vox’s
leader, Santiago Abascal, called on Moreno to heed the voices of the 576,000
Andalucíans who had backed his party and thereby shown that they “believe in
national priority … and believe that regional governments can work to stop the
migrant invasion”.
Polls
leading up to next year’s general election suggest the PP is on course to
defeat Sánchez, whose inner circle, party and administration have been battered
by a series of corruption scandals. However, the conservatives are expected to
fall short of an absolute majority and would probably need Vox’s support to
govern at a national level.
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