After being appointed senator by the Galician Parliament last year, the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo has not succeeded in making the leap directly from the Upper House to the presidency of the Government, with a majority at his disposal in the Congress of Deputies. But yes, he has left behind a Senate in which the Popular Party has recovered an absolute majority, turning the tables on his 2019 defeat of 84 seats against the 92 of the PSOE. In the Catalan part, the majority system amplified the debacle of Esquerra, which goes from 11 to 3 seats, while Junts retains one of the three it had and the Socialists give up twenty, before the tide of the PP, which rises to close to forty.
Yesterday the direct election part of this chamber, as useful for the parties as it is useless for society, was voted on. There are 208 seats, which are added to those designated by the autonomous parliaments, with one for every million inhabitants or fraction, which gives about 60. With 95% scrutinized, the PP voted for 120 senators, who join the 23 that, according to Europa Press, it has by autonomous designation. In this mechanism there is a certain complication, because some communities name them coinciding with their legislature. Others, with that of the Cortes Generales.
As these are open list elections, in which the four candidates with the most votes in each peninsular province obtain the seats and with a special regime for the islands and Ceuta and Melilla, the Government does not provide results in votes. Political scientists then calculate them by taking the result of the first candidate of each party or taking the average among those who present. In any case, the result of the PP should not differ much from the 33% of Congress.
It helped him to get 58% of the senators at stake, thanks to the majority system, which favors the first force of each province. To give presence to minorities, the limited vote is used. Thus, the parties can only present three candidates. For this reason, in the vast majority of the territory, although not in Catalonia, the PP won three seats and the PSOE, one.
This distribution model, which is the classic and which, especially in November 2019, had entered into crisis, worked like clockwork in the nine provinces of Castilla y León and in the five of Castilla-La Mancha. In the first the score was PP 27-PSOE 9 and in the second, PP 15-PSOE 5. Three to one in each constituency.
In Andalucía, with its eight provinces, there was also an overwhelming popular victory, but it was not 24-8, because the PSOE won in Seville and there was a draw in Huelva, leaving the final result at 21-11.
In La Gomera, the island party ASG won its seat again, with less than 3,500 votes. On the other hand, in Madrid more than 800,000 were needed and in Barcelona, with a low participation, close to half a million.
