Castilla-La Mancha will continue to be a socialist stronghold. Although by the minimum, Emiliano GarcÃa-Page, perhaps the most anti-Sanchista baron of the PSOE, has managed to revalidate his absolute majority and will have a third term as regional president despite the push of the PP and the powerful emergence of Vox.
It has been a night of heart attack, unprecedented in these lands, because very soon in the scrutiny it was seen that the thing was going to depend on a single seat, which danced between socialists and popular and which was decided by just 600 votes in Ciudad Real. GarcÃa-Page finally stayed at 17 seats, two less than in 2019, compared to the 16 that add up to PP (up from 10 to 12) and Vox (enters with 4, a result that almost no poll gave him).
With 33 seats, Castilla-La Mancha has the smallest parliament of the multi-provincial communities and more than three parties have never coexisted. Ciudadanos is left without representation and Podemos, which was left out four years ago, cannot return. That is why GarcÃa-Page, without partners with whom to agree, it was not enough for him to win but he needed an absolute majority.
On a disastrous night for the PSOE, losing Castilla-La Mancha would have been a heavy blow. In 40 years of autonomy, it has been in socialist hands for 36. Only MarÃa Dolores de Cospedal, then general secretary of the PP, managed to wrest it from him in the 2011-2015 legislature, in the midst of a popular wave throughout Spain under the onslaught of the crisis.
GarcÃa-Page’s campaign has been a continuous appeal to the useful vote, both on the left and on the right, to avoid a coalition government between PP and Vox. The regional president has also made an effort to distance himself from Pedro Sánchez, with whose government he has been one of the most critical barons, either because of the law of only yes is yes or the pacts with ERC or EH Bildu.
GarcÃa-Page embodies a kind of conservative socialism that he inherited from former President José Bono (1983-2004) and that somehow deactivates the PP. Now the wayward baron becomes the only one who will govern with an absolute majority.
However, not everything has been good news for the PSOE in Castilla-La Mancha. PP and Vox obtained enough votes to wrest the mayors of Toledo, Albacete, Guadalajara and Ciudad Real, four of the five provincial capitals, from the Socialists. Only in Cuenca did the socialist mayor manage to retain office, although he will need the support of Cuenca Nos Une and Podemos-IU.
