Mañueco gives a new victory to the PP in Castilla y León, which maintains its dependence on Vox, and the PSOE resists

The Popular Party has won the elections in Castilla y León with the support of 35.45% of the voters and 33 seats. There are two more than in 2022, but the result will not allow Alfonso Fernández Mañueco to govern alone.

Mañueco will thus take on this new and final legislature at the mercy of the extreme right and having exhausted his possibilities of doing so alone, since the Law of Senior Officials of Castilla y León prevents him from running for a third election. The PP is growing but also the PSOE and Vox, with more seats than in 2022 and to the detriment of the rest of the left-wing parties, which disappear from the chamber. There is nothing to the left of the socialists.

The votes garnered by Mañueco’s PP exceed the figure for 2019, the year in which the PP lost the elections, but managed to govern thanks to the pact with Ciudadanos. At that time he obtained 433,812 votes. In 2022, even though it is the most voted force, it remained at 382,157 votes, its worst historical result. In this call, the votes – with 99.33% of scrutiny – have risen to 438,000: Mañueco has broken his ceiling. Not even the serious fires in León last summer have taken their toll. In the province of León, it not only maintains the seats it had (4) but is three tenths behind the PSOE from being the first force.

For its part, the PSOE, led by Carlos Martínez from Soria, has obtained two more seats and 30.75% of support with almost 380,000 votes, a result that distances the socialists of Castilla y León from the debacles experienced in Extremadura and Aragon, although there will be no option for it to govern. The rest of the leftist forces have disappeared from the chamber. Mañueco has already rejected the consensus that Martínez has requested during the electoral campaign. “We will not agree with Sanchismo, it is impossible and unthinkable,” he stated upon learning of the results. “He hasn’t heard anything,” Martínez commented. “In this trick we have no cards, in the next one we are going for everything,” he warned.

The PP thus once again depends on Vox, which has improved results with a discrete increase of one seat, that of Soria, which it did not achieve in 2022. At that time, Vox demanded to agree on the presidency of the Cortes, the vice presidency and three ministries. It is foreseeable that this time the negotiations will be tougher, with better results and two other governments pending, those of Extremadura and Aragón. Although the result is only slightly better than that of 2022, it is the first time that Vox has achieved almost 19% of support in a regional election, with almost 234,000 votes. It does not seem that Mañueco will assume the growing weight of Abascal’s party in a future government. After learning the results, Mañueco launched a notice: “We double Vox’s votes.”

The three parties with the most votes experience an increase in seats to the detriment of the left-wing parties. Podemos disappears from Parliament with just over 9,000 votes, and Izquierda Unida – with more than 27,000 – has not managed to re-enter since it left in 2019. On the other hand, the party Se Acabó la Fiesta (SALF), of the ultra agitator Alvise, has obtained more than 17,000 votes, while the regionalist party Soria Ya! It has been one of the most affected because it went from having three seats to maintaining only one. As it was, Por Ávila remains, with one seat.

As for the León party Unión del Pueblo Leonés, it maintains the electoral result of four years ago, with three attorneys for the province of León, after having debuted leadership with Alicia Gallego, but very far from expectations and with a small drop in the percentage of support in the province of León. They have managed to rise to the fourth political force in Zamora and Salamanca, although in symbolic percentages of the vote and very far from any representation.

The ‘Nueve’ party, with which the former PP and Ciudadanos Silvia Clemente intended to return to politics, has barely exceeded 4,000 votes, insufficient support to enter Parliament. The one who definitively disappears is Ciudadanos, the party that promoted Mañueco to power 7 years ago and that resisted the breakup of 2022 with a single seat in which its vice president, Fracisco Igea, was, and whom it expelled shortly after.