{"id":5500,"date":"2023-05-25T19:40:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T14:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5500"},"modified":"2023-05-25T19:40:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T14:40:58","slug":"spanish-pm-faces-key-test-in-regional-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/news\/spanish-pm-faces-key-test-in-regional-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish PM faces key test in regional elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Madrid, May 25: Spain votes Sunday in local and regional polls which will test Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez&#8217;s chances of remaining in power after a general election later this year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In office since 2018, the stakes are high for Sanchez, whose party governs the eurozone&#8217;s fourth-largest economy in coalition with the far-left Podemos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the 12 regions voting on Sunday, 10 are governed by the Socialists either alone or as part of a coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These regional governments have been crucial allies for Sanchez, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when he relied on them to impose restrictions on social life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the votes could mark &#8220;a turn to the right&#8221; whose magnitude could define the next general election, which has to be held by the end of the year, said Pablo Simon, a political science professor at Madrid&#8217;s Carlos III University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) &#8212; which has for months topped opinion polls &#8212; has framed Sunday&#8217;s elections as a referendum on Sanchez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It is only by voting that we can start to turn the page on &#8216;Sanchismo&#8217;,&#8221; PP head Alberto Nunez Feijoo said Tuesday, using a derogatory expression for Sanchez&#8217;s policies.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Madrid, May 25: Spain votes Sunday in local and regional polls which will test Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez&#8217;s chances of remaining in power after a general election later this year. In office since 2018, the stakes are high for Sanchez, whose party governs the eurozone&#8217;s fourth-largest economy in coalition with the far-left Podemos. Of [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,342,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}