SEVILLE, Spain — Spain’s Socialists have run Andalusia, the country’s largest region, for 33 years, a bastion built on the party’s role in transforming the farming region by ushering Spain into the European Union in the 1980s.
But as Andalusia votes Sunday in a regional election that may serve as a bellwether for national elections this year, the Socialists enter the balloting as a party badly tarnished by corruption scandals and a regional unemployment rate of 34 percent, 10 percentage points above the national average.
Though the Socialists are nonetheless expected to come out on top, the vote on Sunday is being closely watched as a measure of just how fractured Spain’s political landscape has become, as disillusionment with established parties seeps into the electorate.
“It’s the first time in 35 years that nobody here knows what the outcome of the vote will be — and that in itself shows we’ve come to the end of a political cycle, not only in Andalusia but in the whole of Spain,” said Teresa Rodríguez, 33, the lead candidate for Podemos, a left-wing party that is barely a year old and is having its first test in a Spanish election on Sunday.
Asked whether the region would suffer if Sunday’s result was a highly fragmented regional Parliament, she said, “We’ve had plenty of government stability, but that hasn’t yielded policies that have really helped citizens.”
A survey by Metroscopia published in the newspaper El País last Saturday found the Socialists with 37 percent support, ahead of the country’s other main party, the conservative Popular Party, which was backed by 25 percent of voters.
Nevertheless, the same poll showed two insurgent parties, Podemos and another newcomer, Ciudadanos, receiving a combined quarter of respondents’ support, which would most likely make them kingmakers in the regional Parliament.
The poll, conducted March 5-11, was based on 3,200 interviews and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
For Podemos, which was founded on a shoestring in early 2014, the election is the first important test of whether its radical anti-austerity message can allow it to mirror the success of Syriza, the left-wing party that swept to power in Greece in January.
For Ciudadanos, Sunday’s vote should help establish whether the party can transcend its Catalan roots and transform itself from a regional, anti-secession party into a national and centrist political force.
Both Podemos and Ciudadanos are fielding candidates with limited political experience who are urging voters to clean up Spanish politics by turning their backs on Spain’s two traditional parties, the Socialists and the Popular Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
“What is clear is that we need to change the way politics is run,” said Carlos Castilla Alonso, a 28-year-old software developer who said he planned to vote for Podemos on Sunday. “We’ve seen here just what happens when a party stays in power for more than 30 years, which is corruption to the point of stealing money from our unemployed.”
Last month, the Spanish Supreme Court named two former Socialist heads of Andalusia’s regional government as suspects, joining other Socialist officials who were previously indicted on suspicion of having orchestrated a widespread unemployment benefit fraud scheme.
Under that scheme, several politicians and labor union officials, as well as their friends and relatives, are alleged to have falsely claimed payments from a fund established by the Socialist regional government to pay compensation to people who had lost their jobs.
But since 2013, when she took over as the Socialist government leader in Andalusia, Susana Díaz, 40, has vowed zero tolerance toward corruption, while forcefully blaming Mr. Rajoy’s austerity cuts for Andalusia’s economic troubles, which are among the worst in the country.
“Susana Díaz has developed a personal populistic style, not far from Argentine Peronism, in which she claims to represent and talk on behalf of the whole Andalusian people, caring for their problems against the central government,” said Manuel Arias Maldonado, a politics professor at the University of Málaga.
“That is why Podemos is not able to damage her so much,” he added. “She is more of a populist than them.”
Indeed, the region presents a rare test in particular for Podemos, which has cast itself as anti-establishment and anti-austerity, but pro-European Union.
Though the European Union is linked to the steep budget cuts that have hurt so many Spaniards, here it is also held in high regard for having helped develop this farming region of 8.4 million, almost a fifth of Spain’s population, after Spain entered the European Union in 1986 under a Socialist government led by an Andalusian prime minister, Felipe González.
“He really helped Andalusia receive significant European financial aid,” said Antonio López, the president of the audit chamber of Andalusia, which reports to the regional Parliament.
“I think many people still recognize just how far this region had been from European levels of convergence and how improved Andalusia became after Spain got to enter the E.U.”
Even as Andalusia has been among regions to continue to struggle with high debt and widespread unemployment in the aftermath of Spain’s construction downturn, Mr. Rajoy’s government has recently been claiming the credit for putting Spain back on track, after its economy grew 1.4 percent last year.
Such renewed economic solidity, however, could be offset by unprecedented political fragmentation and future tensions among parties elected on the back of radically different agendas, some analysts warn.
The Andalusian vote, which comes ahead of more regional elections in May and general elections around November, could “presage the difficult politics that Spain is likely to experience,” according to a report published last week by Antonio Barroso, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence, a think tank based in London.
“While coalition governments can be successful in implementing economic reforms,” he noted. “Spain has no experience with such arrangements at the national level.”
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