Whilst we can’t say that the dust has settled after the political upheaval in Andalucia, ‘visibility’ has improved, allowing us to take a peek.

There are basically five main actors; two of them made tremendous surges in votes and three of them sank back with one of them being the governing party in the Junta.

As in all elections, you will go cross-eyed trying to find a party leader that admits that they got a good trouncing, which is the case of the PP, for example, who yet again shed an important amount of seats in the parliament.

The PP leader, instead of resigning for failing, yet again, seems to think that he has scored some kind of victory and is demanding to be backed as the regional, Prime-Minister candidate.

Where as a little under a year ago his party mocked the socialist PM for knocking up a “Coalition of losers” to make up a majority for the Central Government, Juan Manuel Moreno now thinks it’s acceptable because he needs to knock up one himself. Such are politicians.

The incumbent Prime Minister, Susana Diaz, is refusing to resign after a disastrous debacle, because, as she points out, she won the elections; i.e., her party won more parliamentary seats than anybody else. Yes, it’s true, but like her PP counterpart, each time a regional election comes around, her party has another chunk carved off her parliamentary-seat quota.

Which brings us to the third loser, Adelante Andalucia (Podemos+IU). Long gone are the days when this anti-capitalist, far-left party looked as though they were going to make the PSOE (socialists) obsolete by overtaking them -in these elections they dropped down from 20 to 17 seats and to all intents and purposes appear to be a spent force themselves, destined to irrelevance.

Now, the bright and shiny Ciudadanos, the centre-right party which virtually doubled their seats from 12 to 21, are now faced with a dilemma: can they really afford to be seen rubbing shoulders with the unmentionable far-right Vox, which has just burst onto the scene, in order to form an alternative, coalition government (PP+Ciudadanos+Vox)? After all, the National Elections could be called at any moment if the present Central Government can’t get its 2019 Budget approved in Parliament. Will there more moderate voters desert them if they do appear too chummy with Vox?

So what they are doing is very clever: they say that their own candidate should be the Prime Minister, backed by the PP and with the socialists abstaining. If the socialist vote against, they say, then it will be the socialists’ fault that they have had to count on Vox to get their candidate elected.

The PP candidate, Juanma Moreno, upon hearing this idea, has spluttered that his party is the most voted one of the three right-wing parties and therefore he should be candidate, but as everybody else has pointed out, it is the PSOE that received most votes; not him, so evidently “being the most voted party” is no guarantee even by his own standards.

So what of Vox – enter Darth Vader stage left. The mathematics of the elections results clearly show that it was not just a case of left-wing voters not bothering to vote but that Vox received a vote transfer from socialist voters, the PP and even the far-left Adelante Andalucía party (*gasp!*)

Like all far-denomination, political groups, be they left or right, they’re not somebody that you would like to see your daughter bring home for tea. Vox is misogynist: they want to ban abortions for any reason and they want to abolish public funding for women-help associations. But, they want to do away with regional governments, which makes a lot of sense to even far-left voters because, let’s face it, the two extremities meet up on the reverse side of the political spectrum.

So what is likely to happen? There will be weeks of wrangling. Vox does not want any part of a possible coalition government (i.e., ministries) because they are against the existence of regional governments, full stop, but that won’t stop them voting in favour of a right-wing coalition if the socialists try to prevent one.

There is no way that the socialists will abstain if PP and Ciudadanos make a coalition government, so Vox will be needed to counter the left-wing block. Ciudadanos will cede the premiership to PP eventually, just as soon as the socialists allow them to do so without losing face, by voting against a purely PP+Ciudadanos coalitions.

So, we will eventually have a PP+Ciudadanos coalition, backed by Vox with Juanma Moreno becoming the first (and last) PP Prime Minister of Andalucia. Why do I say last? Because Vox is now sitting back with its arms folded behind its head, secure in the knowledge that its importance will grow in the European Elections, grow in the Municipal Elections and grow in the National Elections, and all the while the PP will dwindle away into insignificance, absorbed by Ciudadanos and Vox (*sniff!*).

What does this mean for you; what changes can you expect, a foreigner, living as a resident in Andalucia? Not a sausage! Oh, it will very probably mean the end of Inheritance Tax in Andalucia, but apart from that, life will go on as usual.

But then again, if you are a Brit, you’re probably chewing you nails over the bloody stupid Brexit, which of course will affect you greatly.

(News/Political Analysis)