A regional election was held in Galicia on 12 July 2020 to elect the 11th Parliament of the autonomous community. All 75 seats in the Parliament were up for election. It was held concurrently with a regional election in the Basque Country. The election was initially scheduled for 5 April 2020 but was postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early February 2020, concerns about a possible snap election in the Basque Country to be called for 5 April raised speculation on whether regional president Alberto Núñez Feijóo would be willing to advance the Galician regional election to be held concurrently with the Basque one, as had happened in 2009, 2012 and 2016, despite Feijóo's earlier claims that his will was against bringing about a premature end to the legislature. On 10 February, Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu's confirmation of a Basque election for 5 April prompted Feijóo to precipitate the end of the Galician legislature and announce a regional election for the same day. However, on 16 March it was announced that the vote would be postponed for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, shortly after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's declaration of a nationwide lockdown in the country starting on the previous day.
Feijóo's ruling People's Party (PP) maintained its dominance at the regional level, maintaining its vote share and seat count from the 2016 election. The Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) picked up the vast majority of losses from Galicia in Common–Renewal–Tides (GeC–AM), the successor alliance to En Marea after several party splits, seeing their results spike by over 15% to second place of the vote and seeing their seat count increase by 13 to their best result since 1997. The Socialists' Party of Galicia (PSdeG–PSOE) remained in third place, neither gaining nor losing any seats compared to the previous election. Support for GeC–AM plummeted in comparison to En Marea's results in 2016, failing to cross the electoral threshold and losing all 14 of the seats they held prior to the vote. The far-right Vox, which had seen a rise in support in the region during the November 2019 general election, failed to cross the electoral threshold and suffered from tactical voting to Feijóo's PP.
Background A vote of no confidence in June 2018 had seen the downfall of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of Galician descent, and his succession by Pedro Sánchez from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). After eight convoluted months in which the PSOE had led a very precarious minority government, Sánchez called a general election for 28 April 2019, in which the People's Party (PP) did not come out in top place in Galicia for the first time in history, with the party having won all previous elections—general, local, European and regional—since its inception in 1989. The local and European Parliament elections held on 26 May 2019 saw the PSOE's local branch, the Socialists' Party of Galicia (PSdeG), sweeping across the region and winning control of all main Galician cities but Pontevedra and Ourense: A Coruña, Ferrol, Lugo, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo, the latter seeing an humiliating defeat for Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo after his local candidate scored a bare 13% of the vote to the PSdeG of incumbent mayor Abel Caballero's 67%. The electoral victories of 2019 and the weaknesses of the ruling PP after eleven years in the Xunta de Galicia prompted prospects of the PSdeG being returned to the regional government under the leadership of Gonzalo Caballero, nephew of Vigo's mayor.
Concurrently, the political space held by the En Marea party had broken up after internal disputes. In late 2018, a crisis concerning the election of a new party leadership resulted in a split between members supporting Luis Villares and En Marea's founding member parties, Podemos, Renewal–Nationalist Brotherhood (Anova) and United Left (EU). Villares was elected as new En Marea leader on 24 December 2018 amid accusations of fraud and vote rigging, prompting Podemos, Anova and EU to withdraw from En Marea, dubbing it as a "failed" political project. Podemos and EU would contest both the April and the November 2019 general elections under the En Común–Unidas Podemos brand, forming the Galicia en Común sub-group within Unidas Podemos in the Congress of Deputies. In September 2019, legislators from Podemos, Anova and EU formed the Grupo Común da Esquerda in the Parliament of Galicia, forcing En Marea loyalists into the Mixed Group.
Overview Under the 1981 Statute of Autonomy, the Parliament of Galicia was the unicameral legislature of the homonymous autonomous community, having legislative power in devolved matters, as well as the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a regional president.. The electoral and procedural rules were supplemented by national law provisions..
Date The term of the Parliament of Galicia expired four years after the date of its previous election, unless it was dissolved earlier. The election decree was required to be issued no later than 25 days before the scheduled expiration date of parliament and published on the following day in the Official Journal of Galicia (DOG), with election day taking place 54 days after the decree's publication.; ( by ). The previous election was held on 25 September 2016, which meant that the chamber's term would have expired on 25 September 2020. The election decree was required to be published in the DOG no later than 1 September 2020, setting the latest possible date for election day on 25 October 2020.
The regional president had the prerogative to dissolve the Parliament of Galicia at any given time and call a snap election, provided that it did not occur before one year after a previous one under this procedure. In the event of an investiture process failing to elect a regional president within a two-month period from the first ballot, the Parliament was to be automatically dissolved and a fresh election called..
The decision of Catalan president Quim Torra on 29 January 2020 to announce a snap Catalan regional election to be held at some point throughout 2020 was said to have raised concerns within the Basque government of Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, whose party, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), sought to prevent the next Basque regional election—which was due by autumn of 2020 at the latest—from being held simultaneously to prevent any interference from the Catalan political debate into the Basque campaign. This in turn increased pressure on Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo to unveil the Galician election date, with speculation mounting on whether he would coordinate the electoral timing with that of a hypothetical snap Basque election—as had happened in 2009, 2012 and 2016—or would let the legislature reach its natural end, thus bringing the election to the autumn of 2020.
Asked on the issue on 7 February, Feijóo did not rule out a simultaneous call with the Basque election, but vindicated that the autonomy of adopting such a decision was "his" and that he would not be discussing hypothetical scenarios—on the possibility of Urkullu announcing a snap election within the next few days—until they happened. La Vanguardia reported on 9 February that Feijóo could be interested in waiting for an autumn election to be held concurrently with the Catalan one, at a time when he had not yet revealed whether he would be running for a fourth time in office. On 10 February, Urkullu confirmed the Basque election for 5 April, with Feijóo commenting that he would be making a choice on the date of the Galician election "immediately" but that it would not be affected by Urkullu's decision. In response to the Basque announcement, Feijóo summoned his government to an urgency meeting later in the same day and decided to trigger a snap election to be held simultaneously on 5 April.
The Parliament of Galicia was officially dissolved on 11 February 2020 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the DOG.. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the election's original date was suspended on 18 March,. with it being rescheduled for 12 July 2020 on 18 May after the easing of virus spreading conditions and a reduction in the infection rate, resulting in the lockdown established by the state of alarm lasting from 15 March to 21 June.. The date for the reconvening of the chamber was set for 7 August..
Electoral system Voting for the Parliament was based on universal suffrage, comprising all Spanish nationals over 18 years of age, registered in Galicia and with full political rights, provided that they had not been deprived of the right to vote by a final sentence.; ( by ). Additionally, non-resident citizens were required to apply for voting, a system known as "begged" voting ()..
The Parliament of Galicia had a minimum of 60 and a maximum of 80 seats, with electoral provisions fixing its size at 75. All were elected in four multi-member constituencies—corresponding to the provinces of A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra, each of which was assigned an initial minimum of 10 seats and the remaining 35 distributed in proportion to population—using the D'Hondt method and closed-list proportional voting, with a five percent-threshold of valid votes (including blank ballots) in each constituency.; . The use of this electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold depending on district magnitude and vote distribution.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Parliament constituency was entitled the following seats:, and .
Seats Constituencies 25 A Coruña 22 Pontevedra 14 Lugo, Ourense
The law did not provide for by-elections to fill vacant seats; instead, any vacancies arising after the proclamation of candidates and during the legislative term were filled by the next candidates on the party lists or, when required, by designated substitutes. ( by ).
Outgoing parliament The table below shows the composition of the parliamentary groups in the chamber at the time of dissolution.
+ Parliamentary composition in February 2020 Groups Parties Legislators Seats Total People's Parliamentary Group of Galicia PP 41 41 Socialists of Galicia's Parliamentary Group PSdeG–PSOE 14 14 Common Group of the LeftParliamentary Group Podemos 6 9 EU 1 Anova 1 MA 1 Galician Nationalist Bloc's Parliamentary Group BNG 6 6 Mixed Parliamentary Group En Marea 5 5
Parties and candidates The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, alliances and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form an alliance were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within 10 days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one percent of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list. ( by ). Additionally, a balanced composition of men and women was required in the electoral lists, so that candidates of either sex made up at least 40 percent of the total composition..
Below is a list of the main parties and alliances which contested the election:
Candidacy Parties andalliances Leading candidate Ideology Previous result Vote % Seats PP Alberto Núñez Feijóo ConservatismChristian democracy 47.6% GeC–AM Antón Gómez-Reino Left-wing populismDirect democracyDemocratic socialism 19.1% PSdeG–PSOE Gonzalo Caballero Social democracy 17.9% BNG Ana Pontón Galician nationalismLeft-wing nationalismSocialism 8.3% Cs Beatriz Pino Liberalism 3.4% MG Pancho Casal Galician nationalismDemocratic socialism 0.3% Vox None Right-wing populismUltranationalismNational conservatism colspan="2"