Mounted on the wall of José Luis Martínez’s small bar, El Albero in Chinchón, is the head of a bull, one of countless killed by matadors in this upmarket town about 30 miles from Madrid.
Martínez is proud of his trophy, and insists that bullfighting is an important tradition that needs to be kept alive. For that reason, and others, the 43-year-old is voting for the governing Popular party (PP) in Sunday’s general election.
While the capital is in a frenzy over how well two new parties – the leftwing Podemos and the more centrist Ciudadanos – will fare against more established rivals, there is little hint in Chinchón that anything has changed.
It is because of places like Chinchón – population just over 5,000 – that, despite the attention grabbed by the newcomers, opinion polls indicate that the PP is likely to emerge as Sunday’s victor. As in Madrid, there are campaign banners everywhere. But here they are overwhelmingly for the PP and, to a lesser extent, the socialist PSOE, the parties that have dominated politics since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
“Of course I’m voting for the PP,” says Martínez. “We’ve had almost 30 years of the PP in Chinchón and that’s not going to change. Yes, the party wants to protect bullfighting but, more importantly, the government is saving the economy – that is why they need to be re-elected.”
Despite the rise of the two challengers and the coverage they have attracted, Martínez is not alone. The centre-right PP is the favourite to top the polls when they close at 8pm local time. The PSOE, the traditional leftwing party, looks odds-on to finish second.
In 2011 when the PP, led by prime minister Mariano Rajoy, won a landslide victory, Spain was in a mess. The economic crisis had plunged the country into its deepest ever recession and, under pressure from Brussels and Berlin, Rajoy took an axe to public spending.
The economy is now recovering, but savage austerity led to unemployment spiking at more than 26% – it’s still above 21% – and a bonfire of public services.
If that was not bad enough, within a year of taking office the PP was plunged into crisis as several corruption cases came to light: the party’s then treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, was accused of running a slush fund for senior party members, while a former PP minister, Rodrigo Rato, is also under investigation. Several PP councillors have also been jailed for being on the take.
It would be enough to sink governments in most countries but, outside Spain’s big cities, traditions die hard. As younger people move to the urban centres, older generations who grew up with the two traditional parties tend to stick with what they know. Podemos and Ciudadanos have found it difficult to attract support in the regions and, because of Spain’s electoral system, the challengers are at a significant disadvantage.
“The electoral system is designed to support the bigger parties,” says Antonio Barroso of political risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence. “This clearly favours the PP, but also Podemos and Ciudadanos have found it more difficult to penetrate non-urban areas. They have not had the same coverage in the local press, and there are fewer young people to connect with their message.”
The statistics are telling. In Madrid, to be elected from the parties’ lists a candidate needed around 90,000 votes in 2011. In the provinces the total is much lower. According to Bloomberg, in the province of Soria in the Castilla y León region, 16,000 votes would be enough. Because Podemos and Ciudadanos have the majority of their support in urban areas, they need to work that much harder.
In places such as Madrid and Barcelona, where the cost of living is higher, the young have been disproportionately affected by the recession, especially given that youth unemployment is at 47.7%.
What is more, while Rajoy’s government has made it easier for companies to sack staff with ever less generous redundancy terms, one group that has seen their fortunes improve in the past four years is Spain’s pensioners. Pensions have risen as other budgets have been slashed, and last week the PP announced it would cut income tax for those above retirement age who opt to stay in work. The result is unsurprising: the over-55s are twice as likely to back the PP as younger people.
Visiting Chinchón from Madrid on Friday, Patricia López and her boyfriend, Luis Alberto Carreion, both in their 30s, are planning to back the Ciudadanos. But they are not surprised that the PP expects to do well in Chinchón.
“Everyone here is older and they have had no experience of the new parties,” says López. “They trust the traditional parties, and even though they got cross about the corruption too, it is not a new thing in Spain – the older people have grown used to it.”
Maybe, but even in Chinchón May’s local elections saw an independent mayor winning office, beating the PP incumbent. Analysts such as Barroso argue that May’s disastrous local election results for the PP, in which it lost control of former strongholds across the country, came as their usual voters punished them for the corruption scandals and stayed at home.
But a general election is different, and turnout today on Sunday is expected to be as high as 80%, which means the party’s supporters will be back out in force.
As for the corruption cases, people in Chinchón bristle at the suggestion that it is simply a PP problem. “The PSOE is just as bad, and in a few years the same will happen to Podemos and Ciudadanos – they just haven’t had time to be as corrupt yet,” says Cristina Valenzuela, 28, a receptionist at the town’s parador hotel. “I have always voted for the PP,” she says. “Rajoy has done a great job of saving the economy. Employment is up and so is growth. I know people complain that salaries are low, but more people are in work and that’s important.”
If today’s voting follows recent opinion polls, Rajoy will lose his majority but will emerge with the most votes and the most seats. That will afford him the first chance to form a government, possibly with Ciudadanos, a link that has been floated for some time.
Rajoy will owe his victory to Spain’s regions which, as well as benefiting from a skewed voting system, have been carefully nurtured by the government. In addition to economic policies that help older voters, the PP has reintroduced bullfighting on primetime television. It has also tried to make it a protected national pastime, even as leftwing mayors in the bigger cities have attempted to cut public funding.
Spain’s provinces will also back the government because of the improving economy. Growth at more than 3%, and increased tourism which places such as Chinchón depend on, mean the recession in some PP strongholds is becoming a thing of the past. “Podemos? Not a chance,” laughs Martínez in the El Albero bar. “The economy is only just starting to recover. We can’t risk a change now.”
