First electoral call of the year. The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, announced this Thursday the call for elections in Galicia for next February 18, which begins an electoral period in Spain that will continue with the Basque elections, the European elections, and perhaps the Catalan ones. , if brought forward to the end of 2024.
Rueda has made this decision after the Galician Parliament approved the budgets for 2024 on Tuesday, and with this, according to Xunta sources, the Galician president intends for institutional normality to be 100% active again as soon as possible, with the end of a long wait until the elections and then the campaign and the formation of the government to install Galicia in the interim.
The last elections were held in Galicia on July 12, 2020, after the official call, scheduled for April 5, was suspended due to the pandemic, and due to the impossibility of guaranteeing health security in one of the most difficult times. peak of contagion. The suspension was carried out with the agreement of all the parties in the Galician parliamentary arc, which considered it the best formula.
Then, the Basque Country also suspended its call and postponed it to the same day in July. The Lehendakari, Íñigo Urkullu, and the then president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, had made the elections coincide in the last calls, and also agreed on the postponement.
On this occasion, both from the Basque Country and from Galicia, the conclusion had been reached that it was better to make different calls, and the Galician president preferred to take into account, for the call, the first official date four years ago. , and not the July one established for the suspension, while Urkullu, who will not repeat the position, prefers to speed up the deadlines, after his party, the PNV, has designated another candidate for Ajuria Enea, Imanol Pradales.
This will also be the first time that Alfonso Rueda, who acceded to the position of president after the resignation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in April 2022, will appear as headliner for the presidency of the Xunta de Galicia in April 2022, after the PP crisis will lead to considering running to replace Pablo Casado in the leadership of the party. Rueda was then vice president and became president of the Xunta, which he now aspires to obtain at the polls.
In the 2020 elections, Feijóo obtained 42 deputies of the 75 that make up the Parliament of Galicia, a comfortable absolute majority, four above the required number, and one seat higher than the result he had obtained four years before. Now, the PP aspires to maintain the absolute majority, and it will be tested if Vox, which Feijóo had always managed not to obtain representation, enters Parliament. The second political force was four years ago the BNG, with 19 seats, followed by the PSdG-PSOE, with 14. Galicia en Común- Podemos, which today would be Sumar, after losing the 14 seats it had obtained in the previous legislature.
