MADRID (Reuters) – The leader of Spain’s conservative opposition People’s Party (PP) on Monday welcomed the announcement of a snap general election in July and asked voters to give his party a “clear majority”.
“The sooner (the election), the better,” Alberto Nunez Feijoo told a news conference,
Feijoo said the first step to unseat Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was the PP’s strong showing in the local and regional elections held on Sunday, a result he said “Sanchez wants to go unnoticed” with the snap election announcement.
“Spaniards have said ‘enough, we’ve had it up to here’,” he added.
Only three of the 12 regions that held elections retained Socialist dominance by very narrow margins, while the remaining nine were won by the PP.
However, the conservatives will require coalitions or informal support agreements with the far-right Vox party in six regions where the PP fell short of securing a working majority.
(Reporting by Corina Pons and Inti Landauro; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip)
