Spain goes to the polls for its regional elections May 24. Andalusia, Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country will not be taking part, since their status as historical nationalities affords them more autonomy, including the right to schedule their own elections. The last regional elections, in May 2011, coincided with the launch of the Indignados movement — which was made up of disaffected youths and sparked the global Occupy movement — in Madrid just a week before. In those elections, the center-right People's Party secured a dramatic victory before going on to beat out the incumbent center-left Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the general elections later that year. Regional governments are more influential in Spain than in other European countries because they are responsible for 50 percent of general government spending and 70 percent of public employment.
Spain's regional elections can be highly indicative of the outcome of the general election, with the margin of difference in 2011 being just 0.5 percent for the People's Party (44.1 percent regional, 44.6 percent general) and just 0.1 percent for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (28.7 percent, 28.8 percent). Considering the high unpredictability of the general elections coming in December, the guidance from the regional elections will be very useful.
Two newcomers have exploded onto the scene in the past 18 months, throwing the traditional People's Party and Spanish Socialist Worker's Party rivalry off balance: Podemos, which grew out of the 2011 Indignados movement, and Ciudadanos, which has been a regional force in Catalonia since 2006 but became a national player in 2015. Various corruption scandals have empowered these two groups, which present themselves as honest alternatives to establishment parties (though Podemos has faced corruption allegations of its own), and some national polls now have the four parties neck and neck.
