Sawt Falasteen - Spain's conservatives keep control of regional stronghold

The Popular Party (PP) won 47.5 percent of the vote, giving it an absolute majority of 40 seats in the 75-seat regional parliament, official results with 95.5 percent of the vote counted showed.

It has governed Galicia since 2009, winning majorities in each of the last four elections under Alberto Nunez Feijoo who in 2022 left the rural northwestern region of some 2.7 million residents to become national party leader.

Polls in recent weeks suggested the race was tightening, and raised the possibility that a surging left-wing nationalist BNG party and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists could together secure an absolute majority to oust the PP from power.

The BNG boosted its results and got 25 seats, picking up votes at the expense of the Socialist party which only won nine.

But even though the PP won two fewer seats than at the last election in 2020, it still has enough to continue to govern alone.

The election came as Feijoo was under fire after he announced last weekend he was in favour of granting a conditional pardon to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont over his role in the region's failed 2017 independence push.

He said he had even studied "for 24 hours" an amnesty for separatists before ruling it out.

Yet under his leadership, the PP has consistently blasted Sanchez for offering an amnesty to Puigdemont and hundreds of other Catalan separatists in exchange for parliamentary support from two Catalan separatist groups to form a new government following July's inconclusive national elections.

Feijoo has repeatedly called the controversial amnesty -- which still must be approved by parliament -- a "humiliation" and the PP has staged large demonstrations against it.

The apparent U-turn has upset members of his party and left him open to accusations of hypocrisy.

"In the morning he negotiates a rally and pardons and in the afternoon, he protests against the separatists," Sanchez said Thursday at a campaign rally in Galicia.

- Conservative heartland -

Analysts had warned that if the PP lost its absolute majority in Galicia, Feijoo's hold on the party would weaken.

It already took a hit after the PP won the most seats in Spain's July election only for Feijoo to fail to cobble together a working majority in parliament to form a government.

That gave Sanchez a lifeline to stay on despite his Socialists having finished second.

The PP has governed Galicia for 36 of the 42 years it has existed under Spain's post-dictatorship system of autonomous regional governments.

The region located above Portugal is one of Spain's most conservative. It was the birthplace of long-time dictator Francisco Franco and his right-hand man Manuel Fraga, as well former PP prime minister Mariano Rajoy.

Feijoo had warned that a victory for the BNG would bring the "social rupture" seen in Catalonia, which is governed by separatist parties, to Galicia.

"Don't let nationalism come to this land, there is no territory where it has gone well," he said during a final campaign rally on Friday.

The BNG, led by Ana Ponton, has made language a key issue, campaigning on promises to boost the use of the regional Galician language in public education and civil service.

B.AbuZeid--SF-PST