Spain’s opposition conservative party faces the prospect of defeat in its leader’s home region, where it has governed for much of the past four decades, when voters in Galicia go to the polls on Sunday.
The People’s party (PP) won an absolute majority four years ago under the then regional president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who now leads the national party, but polls suggest its declining fortunes could open the door to a coalition of the Socialist party and the surging Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG).
In a close-run race, however, the kingmaker may turn out to be Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, the mayor of Ourense, who has won attention by dressing as a Power Ranger and Superman in a single-issue campaign demanding the regional government repay “its historic debt” to the town.
Galicia, in the north-west of Spain, is historically one of the country’s poorest regions and one of its most conservative. It was the birthplace of Francisco Franco and has produced many of Spain’s most prominent, rightwing politicians, among them Franco’s right-hand man Manuel Fraga, and a former prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, as well as Feijóo himself – who could find his position weakened as he faces internal party disquiet over his comments supporting an amnesty for Catalan independence leaders.
The BNG, led by Ana Pontón, has emerged from the margins and is forecast to win as many as 30 seats. Pontón has made language a key issue, campaigning to replace the bilingual education system with something more like the Catalan model, with most classes in Gallego and only a token number in Spanish.
The BNG appears to be picking up votes from the PP and from disaffected Socialist party supporters, who may see the nationalists as a way of ending the PP’s prolonged hegemony.
Polls also suggest that 46% of voters favour a coalition government, while only 29% want the PP to govern alone. Even fewer, 7.5%, would support a coalition between the PP and the far-right Vox party.
Should Pontón win, she would be Galicia’s first woman and first nationalist leader.
Galicia is often described as a country of women, as for generations poverty has driven men to emigrate or to spend much of the year working in factories in northern Europe, returning home only for holidays. Expats in Argentina, Brazil and Cuba will account for almost 20% of the vote, making election results in Galicia hard to call.
The PP has attacked Pontón by unconvincingly comparing BNG to the defunct Basque terrorist organisation Eta, but its own campaign has been overshadowed by the revelation last weekend that Feijóo favours a conditional amnesty for the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and others involved in the illegal 2017 push for independence.
The PP has vehemently opposed the government’s amnesty proposal and Feijóo has spent the week backtracking on his comments.
