Spanish State elections 2007 "votes & not votes"

international | politics / elections | news report Monday May 28, 2007 16:30 by iosaf barcelona - catalunya - EU

Yesterday Sunday 27th of May voters in the Spanish state were called to elect their councils, municipal governments and in 13 of the 17 autonomous regions to elect their regional administrations.
As such the results which became available last night offer a clear indication for the political future in key areas such as the Basque and Navarra, the cities of Barcelona and Madrid & of course the hopes the Zapatero administration have for winning the next general election.

This is a brief summary of the results with attention to the concerns of Spanish state citizens who live in Ireland.

The PP won more votes on an overall basis. They thus claim to have won the election.

Barcelona and Catalunya saw the highest recorded abstention in history, in the city of Bcn only 48.5% of those entitled to vote did so. The abstentionists thus claim to have won the election. Two smaller entities the "suspected of sheltering the neo-falange and tabling an anti-Catalan-nationalist" Citizens party logged only 2.3% of votes cast in Catalnuya and 3.8% in the city of Barcelona had thus failed to see any members elected. thus the unwelcome new comers were destroyed The smaller CUP (Catalan aglomeration of outright independence parties) did quite well in the mountains and valleys and thus looks forward to consolidating its emergence with 20 councillors.

The PSOE (Zapatero) were unsurprisingly trounced in both Madrid's council and regional government elections by the right wing PP, the other fascistic stronghold Valencia also returned the PP. However, counting on junior partners from the left and regionalist or nationalist parties will mean the PSOE actually control more municipal and regional administrations than before. The PSOE thus claim to have won the election.

In the Basque region, the party known as Batasuna have been for several months campaigning to see their various new formations and resurrected party names get through the legal ban on their representation. They had formulated a new position calling for the union of Navarra and the Basque country which are at present under the Spanish state constitution two seperate regional autonomous governments. The pro-PP party of Spanish unity the UPN lost its control of Navarra being replaced by a moderate nationalist party closer to the wish list of both Lehendakari and the radical indepedence factions of Basque nationalism - but it seems certain the PSOE will rule Navarra.

In total the ANV (party resurrected by Batasuna) won 439 council seats with 0.43% of the vote (calculated on spanish state basis) with those candidates who managed to get passed illegalisation.

The government won this election.
Everyone naturally claiming to have won this election.
Analysis and detailed results will follow but for the moment the electoral map has not really changed since either the last municipal elections in 2003 or the general elections in 2004.
Madrid and Valencia are still PP and the PP is still the largest party in the state. The PSOE still get more for their votes and any general election would as in 2004 be on a knife edge and depend on junior partner support. Most of Barcelona still doesn't give a toss about voting and the alliance of parties that run the place are still unchanged. The radical Basques independence party have succeeded in finding a legalised and institutionalised voice though admittedly it's much smaller than it would have been if all their candidates had been allowed or votes approved.

The PP and its far right allies failed to hold Navarra and their strategy of confrontation with fringe nationalism on the peninsula as well as in the Canary island archipelago has failed to bring them more power or support. Of course they still hold their bastions of Madrid and Valencia.....but so what?

The low turn-out in Catalonia and Barcelona delegitimses the process and ought serve as a reminder to the largest parties as well as the smaller entities that their jobs are still reliant on a very large section of the population who are consistent in their abstention - should they be provoked again as in 2004 they will surely hold the balance of power. At this stage it seems very unlikely that Zapatero will not be returned to a second term or the nascent Basque peace process not now move to its long awaited next stage of "the Navarra question".