Andalusia Is Spain: Regional election

Andalusia is the Spain we were sold. When the country ended its exile, the world was sold Andalusia: a vivid kaleidoscope of reds, blacks, oranges and yellows. Flamenco, bullfighting, citrus and heat: searing heat. Where Europe met Africa, Andalusia was a place apart, the exotica of its imagery etched firmly into a foreign consciousness. Spain was Andalusia.

Andalusia is still a place apart. While the whole of Spain suffered because of economic crisis, Andalusia suffered more than most. But it has always suffered. For all its imagery, complemented by the Costa del Sol, the golf courses, the marinas, the grand cities, it has always been a poor region. GDP per capita is the second lowest in Spain; only its neighbour Extremadura is poorer. Not that help has not been forthcoming. Over the years, roughly 50,000 million euros of European funds have been spent on it, but it has never remotely looked like becoming "one of Europe's most prosperous regions", as its former president, Manuel Chaves, said that by 2020 it would be. Youth unemployment, at desperate levels because of crisis, were at their worst in Andalusia and still are. The young of Andalusia, seduced by the good money of construction for tourism and foreign property buyers, preferred the building site to education, but when the building stopped they had nowhere to go except back to their families when the houses they had bought with the wages of concrete and with all-too-easy mortgages were repossessed.

It is a place apart in a political sense. Since it obtained autonomous community status in 1981 and started to elect its own regional government the following year, Andalusia has never known anything other than socialism; the PSOE brand of socialism. On Sunday, the people of Andalusia voted, the opinion polls confident that the PSOE dynasty was not about to be ended.

Susana Díaz became president in September 2013 when José Griñán stepped down. In January she ended the coalition with the IU (United Left) that PSOE had been forced into after the last election. The relationship between the two parties had deteriorated, as had that between Díaz and the leader of the IU, Antonio Maíllo. An election had to be called. Two months before other regional elections, the interest in it has been greater than it would otherwise have been. Here was the first real measure of how Podemos would do. Here also was a test of the centre-left Ciudadanos, which has appeared from almost nowhere to feature significantly in national opinion polls. But here also were potential indications of what other elections - regional and national - might hold for PSOE and the Partido Popular. For PSOE, defeat in Andalusia would be unthinkable, but a lowering of its percentage of the vote in 2012 (39.6%) would border on the disastrous; a confirmation of the inroads made by Podemos. The PP would know that the 40.7% of the 2012 vote was going to slump. But by how much? Though a PSOE stronghold, its share of the vote had generally been an upward one since 1990 when it could only just muster 22%.

As things turned out, disaster did strike. Susana Díaz said the victory was "historic", and it was; historic in the low percentage of the vote. PSOE won the same number of seats (47) as in 2012, but its share of the vote was down by over 4%. For the PP, a loss of 14% and 17 seats was bad but not as bad as opinion polls had suggested. Podemos, as had been expected, came in third, its performance in line with those opinion polls (15 seats and almost 15% of the share of the vote). The Ciudadanos surge was not as great as had been predicted (9 seats and just over 9% of the vote).

So, how does one interpret all this as an indication of what might happen in the other elections to come? Because of the strength of PSOE in Andalusia, it was always going to win, and this despite the corruption cases that have afflicted it in the region. Its 35.4% share of the vote is vastly greater than how it is performing in national opinion polls, the latest three of which have given it an average 19.3% share, but it probably says very little about other elections, other than to confirm that PSOE has failed to reassert itself against the PP. It is a hollow victory, and the PSOE hierarchy will know that it is.

The PP's share of the vote, poor though it was, was higher than how it currently rates in national opinion polls. There may be some consolation in this but it is certainly not a performance that will fill it with confidence. For the PP, PSOE isn't really the threat; it is the other parties.

There is a misguided view that Podemos is only killing PSOE. This simply isn't so, as the loss of support that the PP is suffering is due in no small part to Podemos and others. For Podemos, the Andalusia vote went much as had been anticipated. The share of the vote is seven points lower than how it is rated in national opinion polls, but the strength of PSOE in Andalusia was always going to mean that it couldn't match these national levels.

It would be overstating things to say that Podemos was the real victor in Andalusia, but the vote proves that when the electorate turns up to vote it doesn't suddenly have a change of heart and opt instead for the status quo of one or other of the two main parties. Podemos, and to a lesser extent Ciudadanos, have genuinely arrived.  

Andalusia, as it always has been, is a place apart. The election confirms this only in terms of PSOE's victory. Otherwise, the election shows that it is Spain, and for Spain, Andalusia now poses a big question - with which party does PSOE form a coalition? If it is Podemos, then the shape of Spain's politics for the next four to five years may well have been formed in Andalusia.