The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) has slumped to its worst-ever result in Andalusia, the region it governed almost without interruption for nearly four decades, while the Conservative Vox party has emerged as the indispensable partner for any government of the right.
The centre-right Partido Popular (PP) has still won the regional election of May 17, 2026 by a wide margin, but Juan Manuel “Juanma” Moreno Bonilla has lost the absolute majority he secured four years ago, leaving him dependent on the very Vox voters he campaigned to keep at arm’s length.
Moreno’s PP has taken 53 of the 109 seats in the regional parliament, two short of the 55 needed to govern alone. That is a fall of five deputies from the 58 won in 2022, even though the party has gathered more votes than four years ago — more than 1.7 million, on around 41.6 per cent, against 1.59 million last time.
The outcome confirms, almost to the seat, the warning carried in this outlet’s pre-election analysis: a single deputy short would be enough to make Santiago Abascal’s party indispensable again to any government of the right.
A VICTORY THAT FELL SHORT
Moreno had built his entire campaign on a domestic plea to keep Andalusia out of líos — trouble — pointing to the long PP-Vox coalition talks in Extremadura and Aragón. He has spent more than seven years presenting himself as a moderate, EU-friendly conservative who would rather govern quietly than fight Madrid’s culture wars.
The arithmetic has now removed that option. The same Vox voters Moreno warned against are the ones he will need to be re-elected President of the Junta de Andalucía, and Vox has said it will not abstain for nothing.
THE SOCIALIST COLLAPSE CONTINUES
For the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) the night was worse. The party has fallen to 28 seats and around 22.7 per cent, its lowest result ever in the region it governed without interruption from 1982 to 2019 and long treated as its national stronghold.
The defeat extends a losing run for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that began in Extremadura in December and continued through Aragón. His candidate, María Jesús Montero, gave up the finance ministry and the PSOE’s number-two post in Madrid to lead the campaign, framing the vote as a referendum on Andalusian public services. Two deputies have been lost on the 30 won under Juan Espadas in 2022, despite the socialists adding more than 50,000 votes.
The party leadership in Madrid has tried to confine the damage to the regional level and denies it amounts to a verdict on Sánchez, though the result lands on a government already weakened by corruption investigations close to the premier.
VOX, KINGMAKER AGAIN
Vox has been the clearest strategic winner. The party has risen from 14 seats to 15, on about 13.8 per cent against 13.5 in 2022, and has won representation in all eight Andalusian provinces, finishing second in Almería. It is now decisive for Moreno Bonilla’s investiture, as it was in 2018.
Abascal called the outcome a success “against all forecasts” and asked Moreno to “listen” to the more than half a million Andalusians who backed the party. Its candidate, Manuel Gavira, said voters had asked for “national priority and common sense”, repeating the doctrine — preference for Spanish nationals in access to public housing, social aid and nursery places – that Moreno has dismissed as illegal “campaign language”.
The Andalusian score is below the levels Vox reached this year in Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León, where it doubled its representation. It is enough, though, to let the party condition the PP as it has elsewhere, consolidating a Spanish chapter of the wider European Right that has carried such parties to government or first place across the continent.
ADELANTE’S SURGE ON THE LEFT
The other notable movement came to the left of the PSOE. The andalucista Adelante Andalucía, led by José Ignacio García, has quadrupled its result, jumping from two seats to eight on around 9.6 per cent and roughly 400,000 votes, overtaking the left-wing Por Andalucía coalition in a sorpasso. Por Andalucía, led by Antonio Maíllo, has held its five seats but slipped to fifth place.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR 2027
With no serious separatist competition and a sociology close to the national average, Andalusia is widely read in Madrid as the cleanest preview of Spain’s next general election, expected by 2027. The four questions the campaign posed have now been answered: the PP cannot quite win alone, the PSOE has not held its historic floor, Vox is still rising and the moderate centre-right has not outpolled the harder Right by enough to spare its leaders awkward arithmetic.
For Moreno, the immediate task is the one he insisted he did not want. For Sánchez, the next polling stations to open are likely to be those of the contest that decides his own future.
