Madrid---By voting in local elections for upstart parties that vow to fight corruption and an economic downturn, Spanish voters will force their politicians to learn to form coalitions, analysts say.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party suffered huge losses in Sunday's regional and local polls ahead of a year-end general election and the main opposition Socialist party failed to capitalise on its adversary's weakness.
The two parties, which have alternated in government for nearly four decades, captured a combined 52 percent of the vote nationwide, down from 65 percent four years ago.
They lost support to new upstart parties, the centre-right Ciudadanos party which went national in 2013 and the anti-austerity Podemos, an ally of Greece's Syriza, which was set up last year.
Podemos came in third place in 12 of the 13 Spanish regions that voted on Sunday alongside more than 8,000 towns and cities, boosted by its promise to fight economic inequality and corruption.
Ciudadanos came in third place in the municipal elections, the first time it has fielded candidates for mayor.
And in big cities like Madrid and Barcelona "citizens platforms" backed by Podemos which were born out of the "Indignado" ("Outraged") protests that swamped Spanish streets during the recent years of economic crisis are set to take power.
In Barcelona Ada Colau, who became a household name in Spain after she led a movement against housing evictions during the economic crisis, won 11 of the 41 seats at the municipal assembly, beating the incumbent Xavier Trias, a conservative Catalan separatist.
Colau said Monday she would favour the Socialists and two Catalan separatist parties -- the leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya party and the far-left CUP party -- when seeking accords.
"This does not mean that we can't have occasional agreements on key issues" with other parties, she added.
Ahora Madrid, the citizens platform that backed an ex-communist retired judge for mayor, captured 20 seats in the Madrid municipal assembly, just one less than the Popular Party which has governed the Spanish capital for over two decades.
If it forms an alliance with the Socialists, who won nine seats, they would have a majority.
AFP
