Spain's Municipalities

Overview

Spain is holding local elections on 28 May in all 8,131 municipalities. Each municipality has an elected council which forms a governing executive (ayuntamiento) which in turn elects a mayor (alcalde), with the mayor tending to be the leading candidate of the largest party in the governing executive. Councils (excluding those with a population smaller than 250) are elected by a municipality-wide closed proportional list system with a 5% threshold for attaining seats.

PollCat is covering the largest 10 municipalities where the governing centre-left PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, 'Spanish Socialist Workers' Party') have 4 mayors, centre-right PP (Partido Popular, 'People's Party') have 3, and the 3 other mayors are from other parties.

PSOE and Podemos (including any electoral coalitions involving Podemos which come under various names depending on the municipality) tend to go into the same executive or at least vote for the same mayoral candidate in the council, with PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox doing the same. Murcia is the exception in the 10 largest councils where since 2021, PSOE and Ciudadanos have been in the governing executive together supported by Podemos.

PSOE are slight favorites to hold their mayoral positions in Seville and Las Palmas, while they are also slight favorites to gain Zaragoza from PP. PP are favorites to hold their mayoral positions in Madrid and Málaga and are also favored to gain the mayoralty in Murcia from PSOE. They are slight favorites to gain it from PSOE in Palma as well. They are also slightly favored to gain the mayoralty of Valencia from the regionalist party Coalició Compromís.

In Barcelona, the alliances between the parties are somewhat more flexible than in the other municipalities. It seems likely that the current administration will not win a majority (presently it is in fact 1 seat short of a majority in the city council), while the largest party could be one of Junts (centrist, pro-Catalan independence), Barcelona en Comú (party of incumbent mayor Ada Colau, left-wing), and PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, 'Socialists' Party of Catalonia', Catalan branch of PSOE). In Bilbao, the centrist Basque Nationalist Party, ENJ–PNV (Basque: 'Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea'/Spanish: 'Partido Nacionalista Vasco') will easily hold the mayoral position with an outside chance that they get an outright majority.

Projections of seat counts are based on polls done for each municipal election. The polling average is taken from the latest poll from each polling firm as long as the last poll was done within the last 30 days of the latest overall poll.