People in the Spanish region of Castilla y León vote on Sunday in a snap election that represents a massive gamble for the ruling conservative People’s party (PP). It could see a breakthrough by a new political platform campaigning on behalf of depopulated and underdeveloped parts of Spain.
The vote was called in December after the regional president, the PP’s Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, kicked his partners in the centre-right Citizens party out of the coalition government, claiming that he could no longer rely on their loyalty.
It follows a turbulent few weeks in Spanish politics that have included a row over the country’s meat industry and rightwing fury after the socialist-led central government managed to get its flagship labour reforms approved by parliament thanks to a PP MP accidentally voting against his party.
Buoyed by its performance in national polls – and by its strong result in the Madrid region last May – the PP had hoped to use the Castilla y León poll to win a majority there and to score an emphatic victory before a looming election in Andalucía and next year’s general election.
But its momentum appears to be waning. Recent polls suggest that the party, led by Pablo Casado, will have to rely on the support of the far-right Vox party if it wants to remain in office. The socialists are predicted to finish not far behind the PP, with Vox in third place and Citizens – already a party in its death throes across Spain – coming a distant fourth.
While the PP has already relied on Vox to govern in regions such as Madrid and Andalucía, relations between the two parties have been strained since October 2020, when Casado rounded on the far-right grouping, accusing it of practising a politics based on “fear, anger, resentment and revenge”.
Since then, however, Casado has dragged his party rightwards and enthusiastically sought out culture wars and wedge issues.
Both the PP and Vox have seized on comments that the consumer affairs minister, Alberto Garzón, made in an interview with the Guardian last December.
Although the minister had renewed his calls for Spaniards to reduce their meat consumption for the sake of their health and the planet – and contrasted meat from traditional farming with meat from intensive megafarms – his words were twisted and presented as an attack on Spain’s meat industry.
Standing in front of a field of cows on a traditional farm near the small town of Las Navas del Marqués in the Ávila province of Castilla y León last month, Casado said the government was “insulting livestock farmers, insulting the Mediterranean diet and threatening Spain’s international image”.
He also said that megafarms were subject to strict legislation and that, as he saw it, “they don’t cause pollution”. Asked why some PP councils had campaigned to stop the construction of new megafarms, Casado said those were political decisions.
In recent days, Casado has also accused the Spanish government of attacking the country’s cheeses, beets, and of spending “a million euros on tourism for other races”.
Last week, he suggested that the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, presided over a “Dracula coalition”, but went on to mix his metaphors by claiming that everyone Sánchez bit “turns into a zombie, like him”.
With the PP’s fortunes in the traditionally conservative region suddenly in doubt, the party drafted in Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who is widely seen as a possible rival to Casado because of her electoral clout and ability to appeal to Vox voters.
It did not take her long to stake her conservative credentials. Responding to questions about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in Spain, Ayuso said, “All institutions make mistakes”, adding that few people wanted to talk about the church’s cultural legacy in Spain or about “the charity, solidarity, values and comfort it offered”.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said things in Castilla y León were not going according to plan for Casado and his party.
“The problem is that when they called the elections, they thought they’d do so well that they’d be able to govern alone, like in Madrid,” he said. “But all the polls point at things getting worse for them than they’d thought.”
Anything the PP do now, added Simón, will come at a cost: “They’ll either have to depend on Vox, with all that depending on a more radical parliamentary partner implies, or they could even lose the government. Either scenario is worse for the PP than how things were, or how they wanted them to be.”
Simón also noted that the so-called España vaciada, or hollowed-out Spain platform, could play a role in the shape of the new regional parliament as “there are nine provinces that are very different with local phenomena”. Voters sick of 35 years of PP rule could decide to give their votes to these grassroots groups on Sunday.
The people of Las Navas del Marqués, however, are not holding their breath for an imminent improvement in their daily lives.
Javier, who owns a bar in the town, said locals were more worried about depopulation and basic services than the meat row. “It’s about all kinds of infrastructure, from telecoms and internet to roads,” he said. “There’s also a shortage of doctors.”
Given that most of the meat in the area was raised on traditional farms, he added, few people would take issue with Garzón’s words.
Miguel, who was born in a house on the main square in Las Navas del Marqués 74 years ago, didn’t hesitate when asked what the most pressing electoral issue was.
“Jobs, jobs and jobs,” he said. “People go where the work is and that’s how towns die. A lot of people here have always felt left behind and abandoned by the authorities. Castilla y León needs to be thought about a bit more. It’s not just about Catalonia and the Basque country and Andalucía.”
