Podemos wins Barcelona city Hall, needs alliance to add Madrid
By Bloomberg
A group backed by Podemos, the anti- austerity party that burst onto Spain’s political scene a year ago, seized control of Barcelona City Hall and its allies may be able to add Madrid.
As Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party suffered its worst result in a municipal election for 24 years, Barcelona en Comu won 25 percent of the vote with almost all ballots counted, pushing Catalan President Artur Mas’s CiU into second place with 23 percent.
“‘We’ve shown that it’s possible another way of doing politics,” the group’s leader, Ada Colau, said in a televised press conference. “We’ve won Barcelona for the people.”
Ahora Madrid trailed the PP by 32 percent to 34 percent with 91 percent of the votes counted. The result in Madrid gives the group, an alliance in which Podemos is the biggest force, 20 seats out of 57 in the city’s assembly, one less than the PP. Either party will need the support of the nine representatives from the PP’s historic rivals, the Socialists, to form a majority.
Rajoy’s party has controlled Madrid’s city hall since 1991, making the national capital one of the PP’s key strongholds. Madrid is also the birthplace of Podemos, which was set up by a group of political scientists from the city’s Complutense University who drew on support from the ‘Indignados’ movement.
“This is a magical night,” Podemos’s leader Pablo Iglesias said. “The end of the two-party system is starting to be written in Spain. The two major parties have had one of the worst results of their history.”
Spaniards went to the polls on Sunday to choose representatives in more than 8,000 towns and 13 of the country’s 17 regions. It’s the first nationwide ballot since two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, emerged as challengers to the political establishment.
Punishment for Rajoy
The PP won the most votes overall in the city hall elections, with 27 percent, down from 38 percent in 2011, with 65 percent of votes counted nationwide. The Socialists came second with 25 percent.
The PP has claimed at least 34 percent of the votes in all local elections since 1995 so anything below 30 percent would be considered a “severe punishment,” according to Floridablanca, a pro-market research group close to the party. It would be “catastrophic” if the party failed to get the 25 percent it won in 1991, the group said on its website.
The party may lose a second fiefdom in Valencia, where incumbent PP mayor Rita Barbera lost half her representatives. While still the biggest party in the city assembly, the PP was reduced to 10 representatives in the 33-seat chamber.