Reuters
Madrid/Valencia, Spain

Spaniards voted yesterday in regional elections, with the rise of upstart political parties expected to bring a new era of coalition and compromise, potentially undermining Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his re-election bid later this year.
Rajoy’s conservative People’s Party (PP) is expected to win the most votes but still lose many of its majorities in elections taking place in 13 of Spain’s 17 regions and more than 8,000 towns and cities.
It now controls 10 of the regions where the election is being held.
A surge in support for new upstart political parties has overturned the two party system that saw the PP and its rival Socialists alternate in power since the end of dictatorship 40 years ago.
They now face strong challenges from centre-right newcomers Ciudadanos (“Citizens”) and leftist populists Podemos (“We Can”).
Opinion polls suggest no party will win enough votes to govern on its own in most regions and in some of the biggest cities, including Madrid and Barcelona.
That will mean the arrival of coalition politics, nearly unheard of in the past thanks to an electoral system that favours large parties.
Appealing to voters disgruntled by widespread corruption and an economic crisis that has left nearly a quarter of Spaniards out of work, Podemos and Ciudadanos have pledged to overhaul the two-party system and inject transparency and accountability into politics.
They are both expected to increase their support base, especially in the Madrid and Valencia regions, two PP bastions since the mid-1990s which will be closely watched as a bellwether for the national election, due in November.
Yet, with final opinion polls showing 30-45% of voters were still undecided ahead of the vote, the poll outcome could deliver surprises.
Early voter turnout – which analysts had expected to rise sharply compared to the 2011 local and regional votes – came in below expectations.
Only 34.78% of the electorate had voted by 1230 GMT, down from the 35.81% by that time four years ago.
It was down in most of the country but up in Madrid and Valencia as well as in Barcelona, where pre-election polls suggest a group which includes a strand of Podemos could defeat Catalan separatists now in control of the city.
Amparo Aracil, a pensioner from Valencia, said she was hopeful the election would bring change at both the regional and national levels.
“We hope something will change, not radically, but at least something. And that it will also spell changes in the general elections so that we don’t have another absolute majority,” she said as she left her polling station in Valencia’s old centre.
She and her husband used to vote for the PP and the Socialists in the past but had now backed the new parties, she said, without saying which party she had picked.
In Madrid’s old quarter Lavapies, where immigrants and the working class rub shoulders with bohemians and tourists, 50-year-old civil servant German San Raimundo said the situation in the city and the rest of the country was “disastrous”.
“I hope the vote will be spread and more representative, and that one of the new parties will govern,” he said.
Polls predict that at least three political groups will be needed to form majorities in as many as 12 of the 13 regions and in all the main cities.
In Barcelona, where seven parties are expected to gain seats in the city council, several candidates have already warned that a new election may have to be called.
Such a stalemate is already in place in Spain’s most populous region, Andalusia.
A new parliament was elected in March but no regional government has yet been formed because the winning Socialists have so far failed to convince Podemos, Ciudadanos and the PP to back a minority government.

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