Almeida achieves an absolute majority in the Madrid City Council, with 92.8% scrutinized

"What happens in Madrid resonates throughout Spain.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
28 May 2023 Sunday 16:35
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Almeida achieves an absolute majority in the Madrid City Council, with 92.8% scrutinized

"What happens in Madrid resonates throughout Spain. Today the countdown of sanchismo has begun", the current mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, has come out to the balcony of Genoa at the edge of one in the morning so forcefully. to celebrate the victory by absolute majority of the PP both in the City Hall of the capital, and in the Assembly of the Community of Madrid.

The battle for the Madrid City Council, which has 57 councillors, was presumed to be one of the most open contests on the election night of 28 March. However, José Luis Martínez-Almeida's PP has won 29 seats with 100% support. the votes counted, with which he obtains an absolute majority. He has achieved 14 more councilors than he had in the current legislature.

In second position is Más Madrid, with 12 councilors, thus losing 4. The third force is the PSOE, with 11 representatives, which will have 3 more than in the current composition. And Vox gets 5, one more than so far. Ciudadanos disappears from the municipal panorama in Madrid and Podemos fails to enter the consistory of the capital.

One of the notes of the night is that Ciudadanos, who held the vice mayor's office, disappears and Begoña Villacís has already made her almost farewell for the moment to the municipal policy of the capital's City Council.

With this scrutiny, the Mas Madrid candidate, Rita Maestre, would become the head of the opposition in the Palacio de Cibeles.

The campaign polls drew a relative tie between the blocks on the right and the left after a legislature marked by the pandemic and the engulfment that the PP has practiced on Cs, its coalition partner. However, the PP has swept Madrid, both in the Community and in the City Council of the capital.

As the current mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, said four years ago, as a good cholista, "I like to win game by game", when he seized the command baton of the capital from Manuela Carmena, from Mas Madrid and returned to recover the PP one of the great capitals of the entire Spanish territory.

This year, the first exit polls already gave Almeida's team the winner, but the question was whether he would need Vox to reach an absolute majority (29 councilors). By being in the upper band of those who were predicted by the demoscopic studies at the exit, the PP in Madrid will not need the far-right Vox party to govern.

The polls coincided in setting the number of political formations that would enter the consistory at five, but finally it remains at four parties: two right-wing PP and Vox; and two from the left: PSOE and Más Madrid, leaving out Podemos and Ciudadanos. Hence, ironically, Almeida has also thanked the president of the Center for Scientific Research, José Felix Tezanos, by saying: "Thank you Tezanos, without you it would not have been possible", since in none of his surveys did he give the PP the absolute majority in the municipal elections to the Madrid City Council.

In the last days of the campaign, Almeida perceived that she did not have the same strength as the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whom most of the polls assumed would be close to an absolute majority. Hence, Almeida claimed in the last rallies that both were the same electoral ticket. His strategy has worked for him.

Vox, with Javier Ortega Smith as a candidate for the Madrid City Council, will no longer be a key government partner so that Almeida can carry out his budgets and his right-wing politics without counting on any other party.

In the block on the left, Mas Madrid, with its candidate for mayor, Rita Maestre, wanted to try to wrest the baton from Almeida, as he did with Carmena; but he will stay as leader of the opposition.

The PSOE was at stake in these municipal elections to be the second or third force in the city with a heavyweight of the party, the former Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto. Four years ago, the Socialists won eight councilors, with the former basketball coach Pepu Hernández, who reached 13.8% of the votes. With 100% of the votes counted, the Madrid PSOE reaches 11 councillors, 3 more than up to now. One of the doubts in the polls was whether there was going to be a transfer of votes from Más Madrid to the PSOE. It looks like it is. Pedro Sánchez's party was at stake a lot in the capital, since in the last 19 years it had lost 64.23% of its voters. The Socialists have not governed Madrid since 1989; but Maroto has not managed to become the leader of the opposition, despite being a candidate for the president of the central government.

Finally, the polls indicated that there was an open field: what role would Podemos and Ciudadanos play in the city council, with former athlete Roberto Sotomayor and deputy mayor Begoña Villacís, respectively, at the helm. The final result? None. These two parties are left without representation in the consistory of the capital.