Galician elections 2024: PP wins as PSOE suffers major losses

PP wins in Galicia, PSOE collapses, and BNG rises

Is winning Galicia enough to settle the debate over Alberto Núñez Feijóo's leadership? The PP won the 2024 Galician elections, but the scrutiny left a map far more uncomfortable than the headline suggests: the party lost ground to nationalists, the PSOE plummeted, and Sumar and Podemos failed to make any impact. The victory is real; the landslide is not.

PP wins Galicia, but Feijóo fails to secure his leadership

The first reading of the night is that of a PP that gains territorial power and emerges strengthened for the national cycle. However, one detail weighed heavily during every update: the party appears to have lost votes to Galician nationalism, right in its main stronghold. Since the total did not reach an absolute majority, the question hanging over the night was what the party would do with its leader. No one answered it.

Some argue these elections confirm a trend seen for months. Others respond that a party winning and losing votes at the same time cannot market the night as a nuanced triumph. Both views fit the same scrutiny, which is exactly the problem.

The collapse of PSOE and the disappearance of Sumar and Podemos

The other major headline of the day was the socialist collapse. The PSOE has been facing poor regional election results across Spain, and Galicia added another piece to the puzzle, resulting in a direct loss of territorial power. The most common thesis is that the party has ceased to be a structure and has become a one-man project: a machine designed to keep its leader anchored in La Moncloa (the seat of the Spanish government) with whatever partners are necessary. Some even claim only two of its original symbols remain.

The collapse of the left, to the left of the PSOE, was even more dramatic. A prominent journalist in pogre media summarized the disaster for Sumar and Podemos with a phrase that was quoted incessantly: "the disaster is of dimensions that are difficult to qualify." During the count, doubts even circulated as to whether Podemos had fallen below Pacma in total votes. A party that a decade ago aspired to take the heavens, only to finish below an animal rights formation, is a fact, not an opinion.

BNG capitalizes on the "localist" vote

The third movement on the board is the growth of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG), which made a notable advance and became the night's big winner. Calculations during the scrutiny placed the nationalist bloc's increase at around 200,000 votes, a shift that some read directly as support for declared independence options.

This is where the fundamental disagreement lies. Against that reading, another current defends that the BNG voter in Galicia is not an independentist: they vote "to defend what is ours," in the words of someone with family members who do so, responding to a cultural and historical substrate—the claim of the former Kingdom of Galicia—without the component attributed to other nationalist formations. The counter-argument arrives quickly: their program includes a referendum on self-determination and a private judicial system, and anyone ignoring that is deluding themselves. The most repeated conclusion is that, if independence were ever seriously put on the table, the party would return to its nine seats.

75 deputies, 4 provinces: the electoral law that decides before voting

With the count closed, the debate shifted toward the system. Galicia elects 75 deputies distributed among four provinces; Castilla y León elects 81 across nine provinces, and Extremadura 65, with comparable populations in certain stretches. This leads to uncomfortable questions regarding rural representation and the cost in votes per seat.

The most frequent proposal is the single constituency (circunscripción única), which supporters say better reflects the actual percentage of votes. Under that system, the projected distribution circulating would give 37 seats to the PP, one to Sumar, one to Vox, and none to the Ourense-based formation. Others respond that a single constituency fragments the vote and complicates majorities, which is precisely what is sought in a system designed to ensure that governing is not an impossible mission. In the middle, a striking case: the party led by the Mayor of Ourense would obtain representation with far fewer votes than Vox, a distortion attributed during the election night to the design of the constituencies.

The Mayor of Ourense who watches his employees' clocks

The anecdote of the day was provided by Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, Mayor of Ourense. His municipal government announced that he and members of his team will personally monitor whether City Hall employees comply with their working hours, with disciplinary proceedings for those who fail, including their service managers. A visual time control without clocking in, which, in the midst of the election hangover, reminded everyone that Galician municipal politics has its own codes.

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With these elements, the summary of the night is that whoever most resembles the status quo wins, while the ground shifts beneath everyone else. The PP celebrated results, the PSOE sought explanations, Sumar and Podemos sought work, and the BNG went home with more votes and the same old question in their heads: what to do with them.