Not even old Andalusian heartlands can save Pedro Sánchez

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SEVILLE, Spain — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez officially launched his long-shot reelection bid in Seville on Thursday, appealing to Socialist loyalists in Andalusia, the southern region that for decades served as his party’s political heartland.

But even here, the center-left is now is on the ropes — in a stark sign of how improbable a Sánchez win now looks on Nov. 29.

Surrounded by Socialist supporters waving red party banners and Andalusian flags and shouting “¡Guapo!” — “Handsome!” — the undaunted prime minister took the stage in Seville, dancing to the upbeat strains of a romantic pop song, chosen to underscore his progressive message of love in the face of the politics of hate.

“We’re here to vote, we’re here to win, we’re here to govern,” Sánchez told the adoring crowd, which had been shown videos of the prime minister reciting poems by Federico García Lorca, the celebrated Andalusian poet and playwright murdered by Francoist forces in 1936.

Sánchez’s decision to launch his campaign in Seville is laden with historic symbolism. For 36 years, the Socialists dominated Andalusian politics, controlling the regional government and many of the region’s biggest cities. 

That hold on power ended in 2018, after years of declining support and a string of corruption scandals paved the way for the center-right People’s Party to take control.

Since becoming regional president in 2019, Juanma Moreno has established himself as a steady, pragmatic leader, winning a landslide victory in 2022 and securing the most votes in snap elections earlier this year. His success in Andalusia has also elevated his profile nationally, making him one of the leading figures of the PP’s moderate wing.

Despite the PP’s consolidation of power in Andalusia, the Socialists are not ready to relinquish their claim on the region. Francisco Toscano, a Socialist candidate for congress in Seville, told POLITICO the party still considered Andalusia to be its bastion.

“This is an eminently progressive region, and one whose voters believe in progressive government,” he said.

Electorally, he added, Andalusia is crucial to the Socialists’ grander ambitions. “This is the most populous autonomous community in Spain, so its weight at the national level is very important,” he continued, noting that the region elects the largest number of lawmakers to the parliament in Madrid, making up 60 of the 350 seats.

But while Sánchez’s campaign launch struck an optimistic note about the prospect of an Andalusian comeback, the latest polling suggests the Socialists could suffer disastrous results across the region.

According to the latest GAD3 poll, the center-right People’s Party is ahead of the Socialists in most Andalusian provinces — including Seville, where Sánchez’s party has never previously lost in a general election.

A rout in Andalusia would be more than a regional setback for Sánchez. It would further narrow his slim path to reelection, making a fresh national mandate look all the more out of reach.

Reversal of fortune

The Socialists’ decline in Andalusia is, in many ways, a consequence of their own success.

When the party first came to power in the region in 1982, Andalusia was one of Spain’s poorest areas. But under leaders such as Manuel Chaves — who ruled the region for 19 years — it underwent a profound transformation.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Socialist regional governments used EU structural funds to spur economic development, funding infrastructure projects such as the Madrid-Seville high-speed railway.

Between 1982 and 1996, Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González — a proud native son on Seville — championed the region from Madrid, helping secure major investments and backing landmark events such as the Expo ’92 World’s Fair, which brought a fresh wave of investment to Andalusia.

But as regional living standards improved, voters’ expectations rose too — and the party increasingly struggled to meet them.

“There was a paradox of satisfaction,” said Ángel Cazorla, a political scientist at the University of Granada. “Although Andalusians felt the Socialists had overseen decades of progress, and personally felt their lives had improved, the great recession exposed how much remained unfinished or unresolved.” 

By 2018, frustration over persistent problems such as unemployment and strained public services, and corruption cases involving high-ranking regional grandees, ultimately led to the Socialists’ ouster.

Cazorla said the two deadly train accidents that rocked Spain this year, both of which occurred on the iconic Madrid-Seville rail line, were emblematic of the party’s decline. 

“In addition to the human toll, we can list Curro as a victim of these tragedies,” he said, referring to the colorful cartoon bird that served as the mascot of the 1992 Seville World’s Fair and which many Andalusians associate with the prosperity of the Socialist era.

“The deadly accidents are in a lot of ways representative of a social-democratic project that gradually ran out of steam, and that successive governments have failed to look after what had been achieved not only with infrastructure, but public goods and overall quality of life,” he added.

The generational gap

Socialist candidate Toscano is not blind to the reasons the Socialists have lost ground. 

After decades in power, he acknowledged, the party had faced growing pressure from the right, corruption scandals and a failure to adapt its message to changing living standards. “We had shortcomings in our management in recent years,” he said, while arguing the Socialists had nonetheless remained electorally competitive in parts of the region.

Cazorla argued the party’s difficulties go beyond its record in government: It also faces a generational problem. Younger electors who grew up in an already-transformed Andalusia feel little identification with the Socialists or with a regional leadership associated with the discredited administrations of the past. 

“A young left-wing voter is paying attention to a different message — one the old guard is incapable of projecting,” he said, adding Adelante Andalucía, a regionalist party that advocates in favor of greater self-government and left-wing policies, is more likely to seduce local electors.

Toscano, however, remained hopeful that Andalusian voters would turn out for the Socialists in an election he frames as a choice between Sánchez’s progressive agenda and the global conservative wave. 

“We’ve seen public services deteriorate under Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Javier Milei wielding his ‘chainsaw’ to dismantle Argentina’s welfare state,” he said. “In this election, Spaniards must choose whether to remain a country that continues to make social progress or follow the path of regression we are seeing elsewhere.”