The unique balance of the Valencian Community: 20 years of governments of the PSOE and 20 of the PP

On May 8, 1983, the PSPV, led by Joan Lerma, won the first regional elections in the Valencian Community with 52% of the votes. That Monday will mark the 40th anniversary of this anniversary in which the Valencian Community – which all analysts point to as the key region that can promote or impede political change in Spain – has become the only autonomy where PSOE and PP meet. They have distributed the regional government equally.

A unique balance that has not occurred in any other Spanish community since the restoration of democracy and that will be broken inevitably on May 28 when the electoral count takes place.

The Valencian socialists have governed the Valencian Community for 20 years divided into two different periods. Lerma was there until 1995 (three legislatures; 12 years) that were cut short with the victory of Eduardo Zaplana. A triumph that was the prelude to the political change in Spain that materialized in 1996, when José María Aznar won the general elections.

Then began a few years of popular hegemony in Valencian lands with 20 years in a row of PP governments (Zaplana, José Luis Olivas, Francisco Camps and Alberto Fabra). After reaching the top of 51% of the votes in 2011, the popular left the Palau de la Generalitat to make way for two legislatures (eight years) of an executive chaired by the socialist Ximo Puig. Eight years – the latter with Compromís, to which Unides Podem was added in the second term – that added to Lerma’s 12 show that unprecedented balance between PP and PSOE; each one has ruled the Generalitat for 20 years.

A phenomenon that has not happened in any other region of Spain during these 40 years. In the Community of Madrid, the PSOE also started strong after the Transition until, like the Valencian Community, it lost the government in 1995. However, it never recovered and the presidents of the PP from Alberto Ruiz Gallardón to Isabel Díaz Ayuso they have been happening. The same chronology that occurred in Murcia, the socialists have not touched power since 1995.

In Andalusia, it was where the socialists endured the longest, until 2019 when Moreno Bonilla took a historic turn in the most populous autonomy in Spain. The Andalusian leader is already in his second term after his first absolute majority.

For its part, Extremadura or Castilla y La Mancha have always been governed by the PSOE with the exception of one legislature, the one from 2011 to 2015, where José Antonio Mónago and María Dolores de Cospedal, respectively, reached the regional government. Case similar to that of Asturias, where except for the mandate of Antonio Trevín and Álvarez Cascos (already outside the PP), it has always had a president of the PSOE.

Aragon has also historically been good at the brand of the fist and the rose that has only yielded two legislatures to the PP and has governed 32 years for the 8 of the popular ones.

The popular ones also have their fiefdoms. The longest-lived is that of Castilla y León where, since a young José María Aznar was sworn in as president in 1989, the PP has not ceased to rule. Now he rules with Vox.

Another square in which the popular ones have historically had great results is in Galicia. There the UCD began and later Alianza Popular. The PP has added 28 years in power with Fraga and Feijóo as leaders, although the Socialists enjoyed two previous mandates -that of Fernando González Laxe and that of Emilio Pérez Touriño- to the governments of these two key figures in the past and present of the conservative brand.

The autonomies that come closest to the Valencian balance are the Balearic Islands and La Rioja. However, in both the balance is more in favor of the popular ones who have held the regional government for longer than their direct competitors for Spanish political hegemony.

In the autonomies with a strong nationalist or regionalist party, this balance between the two great parties has been impossible. Neither in Catalonia nor in the Basque Country has the PP ever governed. In the first, historically dominated by the CiU, there were two tripartites headed by the PSC, while in Euskadi, the dominance of the PNV has been monopolizing with the parenthesis of Patxi López’s mandate.

In Navarra and the Canary Islands, the hegemony of the UPN and the Canary Islands Coalition has broken the balance, as has been the case, in Cantabria, with the presence, first of the Union for the Progress of Cantabria (UPCA) founded by Juan Hormaechea and, later, the Regionalist Party of Cantabria by Miguel Angel Revilla.

Thus, this balanced distribution of power between PSOE and PP (20 years in office each) has only occurred in the Valencian Community. A balance that will tip at the end of May to one side or the other of the balance and that can give clues as to where the next government of Spain is leaning.