Elections in Spain: The protagonists of tomorrow’s parliamentary elections

The Spanish will go to the polls tomorrow, Sunday 23 July 2023, to elect their representatives, with Pedro Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijo, Yolanda Diath and Santiago Abascal being the protagonists of the parliamentary elections.

The polls open at 09:00 (local time and 10:00 Greek time) on Sunday and close at 20:00 (local time and 21:00 Greek time), when the exit polls will be announced. The final result is expected to be decided by fewer than a million votes, or fewer than 10 seats in the 350-seat parliament, experts say.

Let’s look at the candidates’ profiles in detail:

Pedro Sanchez: The outgoing socialist prime minister

Many times he was considered politically “finished”. Pedro Sánchez, 51, has been in power since 2018. He ousted conservative Mariano Rajoy with a motion of censure that was unanimously endorsed by the Left and Basque and Catalan parties.

Since then, his government, partnered with the radical Left since 2020, has passed a wide range of reforms legalizing euthanasia, restoring the memory of the victims of Francoism, and among other things allowing people to change gender freely from the age of 16.

Fluent in English, this economist with an international profile has increased Spain’s influence on the European stage.

A risk-taker, he hopes to defy opinion polls predicting his defeat in tomorrow’s snap election, which he called to everyone’s surprise at the end of May, the day after his party and government partner suffered a landslide defeat in local elections.

Alberto Núñez Feijo: The favorite of the conservatives

At the helm of the conservative Popular Party (PP) for a year, Alberto Núñez Feijo has brought the Spanish Right back into a fighting position after one of its worst internal crises.

Local president of his home region of Galicia (northwest Spain) for 13 years, the new Popular Party leader, aged 61, believes “the time has come” to lead the country.

Polls give him a wide lead, his program essentially boils down to “abolishing Sanchezism,” a neologism named after Sanchez, whom the Right accuses of crossing red lines, notably by granting pardons to Catalan separatists convicted of a 2017 secession attempt, either by negotiating in Parliament with the Basque Bildu party, continued of ETA’s political showcase, to adopt the government’s reforms.

A moderate politician, Feijo, however, has supported alliances with the far-right party Vox in several regions and municipalities after the local elections. A hard-line ally whose support may again be needed to form a government if the PP comes out on top in tomorrow’s election.

Yolanda Diath: The Communist Who Unite the Radical Left

Number three in the Sánchez government, the communist Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz managed to unite in these elections fifteen parties representing all the forces of the radical left, including the Podemos party, the main party of this political family, with which negotiations were extremely tense. He thus formed Sumar, this alliance of parties of the radical left.

Almost unknown until she took over the labor ministry in 2020, the 52-year-old lawyer quickly established herself on the political landscape to become the most popular political leader, according to opinion polls.

Reduced working hours during the Covid pandemic crisis, an increase in the minimum wage, a reform of the labor market aimed at reducing precariousness: he carried out numerous reforms with a sense of compromise that were welcomed by the social partners, including employers.

Diath, who hopes to be able to re-form a governing coalition with Sanchez’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), has a left-leaning program whose flagship measure is a universal income of €20,000 for all 18-year-olds.

Santiago Abascal: The Ultranationalist

Five years after his first electoral successes, Santiago Abascal now dreams of becoming a regulator, even number two in a new government, if the support of his Vox party is necessary for the conservatives.

This 47-year-old former Popular Party activist managed to resurrect a fringe far-right in Spain after the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in 1975.

Violent rejection of Catalan separatism, after finding some resonance in the electorate after Catalonia’s secession attempt in 2017, Vox, born in 2013 after a split in the PP, became in 2019 a third force in Parliament.

In addition to fiercely defending Spain’s unity, his program rejects the existence of gender-based violence, criticizes “climate fanaticism” and is very openly anti-LGBTQI and anti-abortion. Ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative positions that bring him closer to the Hungarian prime minister and his ally, Viktor Orbán. A PP-Vox national alliance would give the far-right a role in government for the first time since the current Constitution was adopted in 1978 after 40 years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.