ANDALUCÍA — Voters in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía will cast ballots in a regional election this weekend, with the People's Party seeking to retain the majority it secured in 2022 under incumbent regional president Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla. The contest is the last major poll before next year's general election in Spain.

The People's Party has governed Andalucía for the past seven years, ending a period of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party rule that ran from 1982 to 2019. At the 2022 regional election, the conservatives won 58 of the 109 seats in the regional parliament. Opinion polls forecast that the PSOE will drop from 30 seats to 28, while the far-right Vox party, which won 14 seats in the 2018 Andalucían regional election, is projected to gain one or two seats.

Vox has proposed prioritising Spaniards over foreign-born people for housing and public services. "It's an empty slogan," Moreno Bonilla said of the policy.

Healthcare has featured prominently in the campaign, with 42.2% of Andalucían voters identifying it as their region's biggest problem. Under Spain's decentralised system, self-governing regions are responsible for healthcare. The regional government admitted that more than 2,300 women had not been informed of their inconclusive mammogram results, leading to missed follow-up tests and treatments. Protests over the communication failures culminated in the resignation of the regional health minister.

Bonilla said no one had died as a result of the administrative failure. Ángela Claverol, president of Amama Sevilla, disputed that account. "At least six women had died because of the failure to communicate screening results," Claverol said. She also described delays of up to three months for cancer surgery in Andalucían health services, along with waits for CT scans, MRIs, appointments with oncologists, and radiotherapy, and said patients requesting a general practitioner appointment at a health centre could not get one for 21 days.

Claverol said the public healthcare system had collapsed because of the regional government's growing use of private providers, and that instead of reinvesting money in the public sector, the regional government had directed it to private providers. He said his government had modernised and upgraded hospitals and equipment and increased capacity "so that more patients can be seen and waiting times can be reduced so that we can move towards a closer, more agile and decisive health system."

Cities such as Seville, Málaga and Córdoba have experienced effects of overtourism, including soaring rents and a shortage of places to live. The regional election is being watched for its potential national implications, as opinion polls suggest the People's Party will finish first in next year's general election but will need Vox's support to govern.

Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid's Carlos III University, said the outcome would shape the national picture. "If Moreno Bonilla maintains his absolute majority and Vox fails to gain influence in forming a government, that will confirm that Vox is stagnant and the People's Party is gaining ground," Simón said. He added that Vox's chances of taking 20% of the vote might be fading, and that the party was well anchored around 13–14% nationally, which translates to about 17% of the vote.