350 parliamentarians are elected and Pedro Sánchez is committed to forming a coalition with Sumar’s left to achieve his re-election. The PP hopes to reach a majority that will allow it to govern.
In the first general elections that Spain is holding in the middle of summer, in the midst of the heat wave that is affecting a large part of Europe, some 37.5 million people can vote this Sunday -suffrage here is not compulsory- for elect the next prime minister.
The polls they win the Popular Party, that would be the most voted, although that does not guarantee that he will be able to form a government to wrest the presidential chair from the PSOE-Podemos coalition that has governed Spain since 2020.
The polling stations had been open for an hour when at 9 o’clock the president of the government and PSOE candidate for re-election, Pedro Sánchez, approached table U of Section 033 of the Nuestra Señora del Buen Consejo school in Madrid.
Upon arrival, a group of supporters encouraged him shouting: “President, President!” Booing was also received. “Get out!” Some told him. “Liar!” Others opined.
Sánchez called for massive participation “so that the government that comes out of the polls is a strong government so that we can continue advancing,” he said after voting. He was accompanied by his wife, Begoña Gómez.
The leader of the Popular Party and candidate for the presidency, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, spoke when he left his envelopes at the polls: “We are gambling what model we want of the country. We risk having a solid, strong government. It is necessary for Spain to speak, for Spain to decide,” said Núñez Feijóo.
Before leaving, the PP candidate confided to Clarín: “I want to go to Buenos Aires”.
An hour and a half earlier, Santiago Abascal, leader and candidate of the far-right Vox party, had cast his vote at the polls.
“Any result that Vox obtains is going to be heroic because we have not been able to make one more campaign against it,” lamented Abascal.
And he urged people to come out and vote. He called for “a massive mobilization that allows Spain to have a change of direction.”
Regarding the participation of Latin Americans who can vote because they have Spanish citizenship, Abascal pointed out: “They come from the future and know what the consequences of some policies are.”
Sumar’s leader, Yolanda Díaz, is the only woman who aspires to the presidency of Spain. In his debut in a general election he asked that people not stay in his house.
“In our country, for many years, you couldn’t vote. I ask everyone: Go vote,” Diaz said.
“I think that today we are playing to get up tomorrow with more rights, more freedoms. I ask you to go vote, ”she insisted.
“Let’s think that the right to vote has not fallen from heaven. A lot has been fought in this country so that we can vote freely and what we are at stake is a lot. We are risking the next decade”; she added.
Madrid. Correspondent
