Spanish state

Elections in Andalucia: After the Whirlwind

Friday 22 May 2026, by David de la Cruz, Manuel Garí

[Regional elections were held in Andalusia on 17 May 2026 to elect the 13th Parliament of the autonomous community. [1] party secured a surprise breakthrough with 8 seats and almost 10% of the vote. See table in El País. [IVP]

David de la Cruz, currently a city councillor in Cádiz, is a journalist by profession. A member of Anticapitalistas Andalucía and one of the leaders of Adelante Andalucía, he experienced the election campaign intensely and with the pent-up emotions of the night of the vote count on May 17th. He spoke to Manuel Gari of Viento Sur.

Manuel Garí: First and foremost, my/our congratulations on behalf of Viento Sur for the result obtained by Adelante. Before delving into political assessments and lessons, I ask you, as a journalist, what are the most relevant facts that these elections have revealed?

David de la Cruz: For me, there are three key and spectacular factors. First, historically, no political party in Andalusia has ever experienced such growth in four years. We do have cases like Podemos, but it wasn’t a new force, and of course, the context was completely different. Going from 2 to 8 members of parliament is historic.

Second, we even overtook the far right in two provinces. In Seville and Cádiz, we are the third largest party.

In the city of Cádiz, we became the second largest party. And, extrapolating from the results of all political parties, even knowing that each election is unique, [with this result] Adelante would win the mayoralty.

Furthermore, in the main working-class neighbourhoods of the provinces of Cádiz and Seville, we are the leading party.

M.G.: In light of what you’re saying, give me a headline?

D.C.: Adelante Andalucía wrests absolute majority from the Partido Popular [People’s Party or PP].

M. G.: I mentioned earlier the restrained emotion you displayed on election night at the Yerbabuena Social Center in Jerez. Does that reflect the contradictory political feelings regarding the results?

D.C.: Indeed. It’s true that the results for Adelante Andalucía are very positive, but we’re not in politics to win seats. The objective was clear: to oust the right wing. Now we find ourselves with a government in Andalusia where the neoliberal, reactionary, and racist policies of the PP and Vox will continue for four years. And that has significant implications in terms of the loss of fundamental rights and the dismantling of public services.

In reality, Vox is not progressing as it had promised; it has shown its true fascist face during the campaign, and we have denounced it as such. On the other hand, the PP’s campaign marketing, presenting a supposed moderation under the leadership of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, has been exposed by their continued close ties with Vox, whom they are now being asked for support to govern. However, there are two factors that will besiege the right wing. First, a stronger, more tenacious, and incisive opposition with eight members of parliament from Adelante. Second, the organisation and struggle in the streets, where we are and, with redoubled effort, will be with the social mobilisation. As we said on election night, the end of the right wing’s reign began on May 17th.

M. G.: Let’s talk about the campaign. What accounts for the buzz and reception it has received? Several experts have emphasised the innovative communication strategies you’ve employed.

D.C.: It’s true that we could talk here about José Ignacio’s [2] fresh and innovative discourse, which combines a profoundly political approach with a very simple understanding, despite the inherent complexity of that. We could also talk about his use of social media or language.

But for me, there are two key elements: our campaign hasn’t been about political manoeuvering, but rather about what matters, the essential issues that affect Andalusia: housing, healthcare, education, and rights. Also, the grassroots, tireless work of Adelante, in every conflict, in every municipality, and in every neighbourhood, work that has been building for many years. All of this has been woven together by a candidate with whom people identify because he experiences the same problems and because he speaks from a place of joy, not anger.

M. G.: Other commentators have given more importance to the combination of reasonable proposals because they are disruptive (the what) and others to the subjective elements (the how). How have you combined radical reason and popular emotion?

D.C.: By filling them with common sense. It’s illogical that housing should be for speculation and not for living in. Anything other than that is antisocial and unnatural. It’s illogical that banks or vulture funds own 7,000 or 10,000 homes.

It’s also illogical that billions of Euros go to private healthcare while there are no appointments available at your local primary care center. It’s illogical that taxes are cut for the wealthy or that gym memberships are tax-restricted while private insurance premiums rise because waiting lists are endless.

It simply isn’t logical that your child’s school lunch is in the hands of a multinational corporation that cooks it with substandard ingredients thousands of kilometres away.

Capitalism tries to legitimise things that are inherently illogical, things that are profoundly unnatural and antisocial. And when these are pointed out, the lies of this system crumble, they fall apart.

And this is happening with the PP and the far right, who want you to believe that the housing problem is squatting, not the enrichment of a minority at the expense of your misery.

M.G.: To whom and to which sectors did you primarily address yourselves during the campaign?

D.C.: To the people of Andalusia —in the broadest sense. To the working class. To the diverse, heterogeneous social majority, who are kept awake at night by the same worries. To 99 percent of the population who share the same concerns. Ultimately, and I think we need to remember this, to the social majority. Because that’s who we are.

M. G.: In that target group, what place does youth occupy?

D.C.: That’s the key. Vox wants to channel the youth vote. We’ve been led to believe that young people are right-wing, fascist, racist... and it’s not true. Young people were without a message. And that’s been proven. When you speak to young people honestly, without being patronising, and you talk to them about their problems, about the privatisation of vocational training, of universities, about how impossible it is to become independent, about precarious jobs, about the freedom to be and feel. When you talk about that, you put them at the centre and show them that the solution to their problems isn’t by looking to the side, or down below, but by pointing upwards, young people feel a connection. Because it’s good, because it’s not bad, because there’s a stronger message than simply hate.

M.G.: Have you been able to compete head-to-head with Vox to give political expression to the anger and frustration of young people and broad sectors of the working class, as José Ignacio García, "El Gafa," [3] has repeatedly pointed out?

D.C.: We haven’t just competed, we’ve beaten them in two provinces: Seville and Cádiz. All this with a minuscule fraction of Vox’s resources of all kinds. Which shows that a space is opening up. And that this is only the beginning.

M.G.: It’s well known that when an electoral programme is drawn up, many issues are included and addressed, but what have been the key themes and fundamental issues of the campaign?

D.C.: Housing, employment, healthcare, and education. From a left-wing, environmentalist, sustainable, feminist, inclusive, and public perspective. Also, the problems of the territories, regions, and municipalities. The problems of mobility and the lack of public transportation; and I say lack, not just decent transportation, because in many places it simply doesn’t exist.

M.G.: Some people have suggested that the result would have been better if there had been only one candidate to the left of the PSOE. If there had been only one candidate, would the effect have been an increase in votes or the cross-vetoes that several commentators pointed out on election night?

D.C.: Obviously not. Because the reality is that the political space has expanded. The traditional left-wing candidacy won the same number of seats as before, while Adelante Andalucía quadrupled its representation. Therefore, we reached people who felt adrift, who were inclined to abstain, who didn’t identify with any proposal. Adelante Andalucía’s premise was correct. Andalusia needed a sovereignist party of and for the working class.

M. G.: And, in turn, I ask you, what are the basic political differences between both candidacies that justify the existence of both?

D.C.: There are differences. Some are programmatic. But there are two that, for me, are the main ones. The first is that we are an Andalusian force, which makes decisions about and within the territory, which doesn’t depend on Madrid, but rather speaks for and puts Andalusia at the center, without anyone pulling the strings.

Secondly, we do not aspire to be subordinates of the PSOE; we do not co-govern with the PSOE, we are not complicit in their policies, nor do we negotiate to gain a few seats. Our independence from the two-party system is absolute.

Then there are other issues, such as term limits or rotation of our representatives, which I don’t believe are merely symbolic, but political, because we’ve shown that we’re not here to advance our political careers, but to change everything. We commit ourselves, giving our all for a few years, and then we leave the institutions and continue fighting.

M.G.: Let’s talk about the immediate future. What are you going to do about PP leader Juan Manuel Moreno’s investiture and the possibility that Vox will demand to be part of the government?

D.C.: We will vote against it. We are vehemently opposed to the far right, but also to the extreme right. Because deep down it’s the same thing, only the thuggish tactics are replaced by smiles. And that’s why they’ll have us against them from the very first minute. Until we can get rid of them.

M. G.:What new relationship will you maintain with Por Andalucía [For Andalusia coalition]? Obviously, there will be unity of action in mobilising for popular demands, but can you think of any lines of collaboration at the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas [Hospital of the Five Wounds, site of the Andalusian parliament] (by the way, what a name for a parliamentary headquarters).

D.C.: We are different political organisations, but not adversaries. And we have demonstrated this during the campaign. Adelante Andalucía has always been clear about where the enemy lies, always, even in previous years. Not all organisations can say the same. And starting from this fundamental premise, we will build a conscious relationship that will ensure unity of action and parliamentary unity on many vital issues. Because in the end, we will be the bulwark against the policies of the PP and Vox. Our focus will be on safeguarding and securing fundamental rights such as healthcare, education, and housing policies, among many other issues.

M. G.: What are the central tasks of Adelante Andalucía in the field of its construction after the success obtained in the popular neighbourhoods of the cities and in so many towns?

D.C.: In addition to the need for a deeper presence, especially in Jaén and Almería, the only two provinces where we lack representation, it is essential to deepen and carry out grassroots work in the territories after the electoral support. We need an organisation that is present in the conflicts that arise, that builds a structure, and that aims for transformation. Now, with the parliamentary group, we will have the tools to increase and deepen this work of building because change only comes from the grassroots. Political projects must be tied to activism, to our roots, and to everyday conflicts. We don’t see it any other way.

M.G.: In upcoming elections, there are two events that will be pivotal for Adelante Andalucía: the general elections and the municipal elections. Both will present a significant challenge. Will you be fielding candidates for the Cortes (parliament)? Could the municipal elections be a valuable platform for consolidating an Andalusian project of and for the working class?

D.C.: The first point, yes, of course. We need a strong Andalusian left-wing force in the Cortes that can be decisive in ensuring our region is no longer treated as a political periphery. Andalusia’s problems must, for once, be at the forefront. And we aspire to be in Congress and to play a decisive role.

And regarding the second point, absolutely. We deeply believe in local government and its capacity to transform everyday problems. Local government is the institution closest to the people. And it will serve for consolidation. In Cádiz and other cities and municipalities, we are the second largest party, so people are demanding our presence.

M.G.: Finally, I also congratulate you, of course, on the cup that your football team won on the 17th.

D.C.: Hahaha, I had to play, Manolo. You don’t let your teammates down in crucial moments. You’ve taught us that.

19 May 2026

Translated and annotated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from Vienstosur.

Footnotes

[1] S Amid the largest voter turnout since 2015, the election saw the ruling Partido Popular de Andalucía [People’s Party of Andalusia or PP] lose its absolute majority. The opposition Partido Socialista Obrero Español de Andalucía [Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party of Andalusia or PSOE-A] lost two additional seats to score its worst historical result in the region. The far-right Vox [Voice] saw modest gains, whereas the left-wing Adelante Andalucía [Forward Andalusia] [[See “A commitment to left-wing Andalusian nationalism”.

[2] José Ignacio García Sánchez is a leader of both Anticapitalistas and Adelante Andalucía.

[3] “Glasses”, a reference to a bill proposed by José Ignacio García that was passed by the Parliament of Andalusia, in which all children would receive €100 towards glasses and contact lenses while fees for adults would be adjusted to income.

Spanish state

• A commitment to left-wing Andalusian nationalism
• The Left at the Crossroads: Notes For Building Anew
• Nooshi – do you dare to do as Spain’s Social Democrats have done?
• US out of Venezuela!
• La vuelta : They did not pass!

National question

• The Indus Water Treaty
• Euskal Herria: a new victory for EH Bildu
• A Rightful Place for Taiwan on this Planet
• Submission to the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales
• Corsica - the stone in Macron’s shoe

• Manuel Garí

  Manuel Garí is an economist, member of the Board and Advisory Council of Viento Sur, and Anticapitalistas activist. He is a contributor to the recent collection of essays Como si hubiera un mañana (Sylone and Viento Sur, 2020).

• David de la Cruz

  David de la Cruz, currently a city councillor in Cádiz, is a journalist by profession. A member of Anticapitalistas Andalucía and one of the leaders of Adelante Andalucía

The 2026 World Financial Crisis

Michael Hudson

 May 20, 2026

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Photo by Edwin Hooper

Interest rates are rising as if this will simply compensate investors for the risk of inflation. The reality is that it will increase the economy’s inability to cope with the breakdown that is already in progress.

How Did the Myth of Interest Rates Rising in Response to Price Inflation Begin?

The moral rationalization is to protect the purchasing power of creditor claims on debtors, as measured by the purchasing power of debt payments over consumer prices.

The pretense is that creditors use their interest to buy goods and services. But already in the 18^th century, critics of debt financing recognized that bondholders recycle most of their money into new loans. When they do spend part of their interest income into the “real” non-financial economy, it is mainly to buy prestige real estate, primarily in major financial centers, and secondly on luxury goods – mainly imported, in Italy in the mid-18^th century, just as today.

By the 19^th century, creditors sought some excuse to justify their interest charges by depicting these as compensation for the risk that they might have to suffer a loss through loan defaults or by a loss of their purchasing power over goods and services as prices rose – and more to the point, over the labor that produced these products.

Austrian economists such as Böhm-Bawerk went so far as to claim that interest was a payment for the “service” of abstaining from consuming their income, but using “time preference” to consume more later. Having to pay interest, thus was depicted as the price of “impatience.” It was as if wage earners (“consumers”) had a choice to abstain from running into debt, lacking prudence. This prompted Marx to quip that the Rothschild bankers must be the most abstinent family in Europe. It was as if there was no financial sector of bankers and bondholders acting independently of the economy of production and consumption.

Raising Interest Rates to Slow Employment and Keep Wages Low

The more recent 20th-century logic is that of Paul Volcker, when he increased interest rates to over 20% at the end of the Carter administration in 1980. He saw wages rising as a result of the Vietnam War’s “guns and butter” fiscal policy, called military Keynesianism in times when the aim is to increase profits, investment and employment. Volcker, formerly a Chase Manhattan banker, wanted to increase unemployment so as to keep wages from rising further. He succeeded in creating a crash as bank interest rates rose to 20%.

That obviously is not the aim of today’s rise in interest rates. But it is the effect. And this is just the opposite of compensating for risk. It sharply increases economic risk throughout the economy, not only for industry and employment but for the financial sector. That is what makes today’s high stock market prices so puzzling, a short-term focus on just riding the wave of rumors floated by the Trump administration about the likelihood of peace restoring the happy status quo ante.

Governments Lower Interest Rates Mainly to Increase Debt-Leveraged Prices for Financial Wealth

The guiding fiction in the idea that rising interest rates will slow price inflation by reducing investment and employment that banks help the industrial economy by creating credit to lend to companies to expand the economy. But that is not what banks do under finance capitalism. They lend against assets already in place and available to be pledged as collateral, for the purpose of buying more real estate, bonds and stocks. The effect of these loans is to inflate asset prices, not consumer prices.

Governments and their central banks may pretend to be lowering interest rates to spur the economy, but the basic reason is to re-inflate prices for financial securities and real estate. That’s the main aim of today’s finance capitalism, after all. Its aim of increasing fortunes by creating debt-leveraged asset-price gains has turned economies into a great Ponzi scheme.

This policy must fail because keeping prices for collateral held by banks and other creditors from falling in price, and thus causing a loss of financialized asset-price gains, requires the economy to take on more and more debt.

Obama’s Bank Bailout and ZIRP Has Left the U.S. Economy Debt-Leveraged

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s response to the 2008 junk-mortgage bank crash is informative for how the government may seek to cope with the coming financial crisis.  Real estate and corporate debt prices were plunging because of defaults on junk mortgages and the web of bad casino bets on financial derivatives. The Obama administration’s response was to inaugurate the Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP). The Federal Reserve rescued the banks from negative equity by loading the banking system – and via it, the financial markets – with low-interest debt leveraging.

The result was the greatest bond market boom in history – but not a boom for industry and labor. A K-shaped U.S. economy saw sharply rising wealth for the One Percent, but the industrial economy has continued to suffer its long decline as wages and industrial profits are being spent on the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance (including health insurance under the privatized Obamacare) and Real Estate.

Financially engineering the post-2008 asset-price “recovery” for real estate, stocks and bonds has left the economy so highly debt-leveraged that there is little room for an economic downturn caused by interruptions of OPEC’s oil and gas trade. The oil shortage is indeed raising the commodity price levels, but this is not a result of higher employment or wage levels. It is a result of Trump’s war to maintain control of the world’s oil trade in U.S. hands. Iran has responded by saying that if other nations do not act to stop Trump’s attack, Iran will destroy Arab oil production and the whole world will pay the price of being pushed into a prolonged economic depression. And the world has stood by, as if believing that the United States can conquer Iran as it did Venezuela and somehow restore normal relations under U.S. control and avoid world depression.

But Trump is said to be thinking of one last great air strike. Whether or not this occurs, it is now obvious that the effect of world oil shortages and the resulting rise in oil prices will force major industries to shut down throughout the world: chemical producers, fertilizer and mining that depend on sulfuric acid, energy users such as aluminum and glass making, plastics needing naphtha, manufacturing, and course household heating and lighting. Their linkages for production will be interrupted at critical points, forcing them to lay off their employees and shut down because they cannot continue to produce and make profits.

It also means that such companies will not be able to meet their scheduled debt service obligations to their bondholders and bankers, not to speak of stopping their stock buyback programs. That is what happens in a depression.

The result will be not only price deflation, but a deflation of markets and consumer “demand” and a wave of debt defaults. That threatens a transfer of collateral and other property from debtors to creditors, whose problems with collecting may nonetheless leave them with negative equity. So we are back in 2009, but without any opportunity to pile on yet more debt to enable economies to “borrow their way out of debts” that have been taken on for the past 27 years.

Rising Interest Rates are an Untenable Solution to Today’s Imminent Depression

The big question that must be asked is how long the U.S. economy can sustain long-term interest rates of over 5% for Treasury 30-year bonds, 4/6%+ for 10-year bonds, and circa 7% for home mortgage loans. Many loans for commercial real estate and also private equity are soon coming due to be rolled over. How can these debts be refinanced at the rates that are looming? And new construction and property sales will be constrained by the inability of new borrowers to pay the higher carrying charges for homes or other properties.

The government will try to do what it usually does: bail out the financial sector, not the “real” economy, which already is being crucified on a cross of debt. But governments are not moving to protect labor’s wages and living standards, or even their industry’s solvency. Central banks aim to save the financial sector – that is, financialized wealth that has been inflated by debt-leveraging as prices for real estate, stocks and bonds have been bid up on credit. But the Federal Reserve has already been holding an enormous increase in Treasury bonds to finance Trump’s soaring budget deficit. How will voters respond to the administration favoring the wealthiest One Percent while leaving the rest of the economy to suffer?

How Should the West React to Such a Problem If We Lived in an Ideal World?

There is an age-old solution to prevent an economic crisis from resulting from interruptions in harvests, and it is applicable to today’s interruption of the world’s energy trade. But that solution is not one that has become part of Western civilization.

The laws of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, typified how Mesopotamia and other West Asian civilization coped with such interruptions in production from the 3^rd through the 1^st millennia BC, restoring economic order for thousands of years. Hammurabi ruled that if the Storm God Adad caused a crop failure as a result of a flood or a drought, the debts that cultivators had run up during the crop year and expected to be paid on the public threshing floor at harvest time would be cancelled. (Many such debts were to the palace and its bureaucracy, so this did not create a revolution by angry creditors. Business debts among merchants were left intact – only grain debts by the disrupted agrarian population were cancelled.)

If these personal debts had not been cancelled, Babylonia’s agrarian population would have been subject to debt bondage to creditors, and to losing their land tenure rights to what would have become an emerging creditor oligarchy.  I have described all this in … And Forgive Them Their Debts” and  Temples of Enterprise.

Such debt cancellations in the face of natural disasters enabled the West Asian economies to avoid the emergence of creditor oligarchies. But Western societies have never had such central rulers, “divine kingship” or Confucian emperors to prevent such oligarchies from gaining control of governments and causing widespread public discontent. As I have described this failure of Western civilization in my Collapse of Antiquity, all government has been by oligarchies (as Aristotle noted), and they invariably fall subject to money-love and wealth addiction that polarizes economies between creditors and debtors, landlords and renters, leading to economic collapse such as that of Rome.

Prospects for Today’s U.S. and Foreign Economies in the Face of the Oil Crisis

Today’s financial markets seem to expect the Federal Reserve to follow its usual knee-jerk reaction to rising consumer prices by raising interest rates. As noted above, this is supposed to slow the economy and create a “reserve army of the unemployed” to keep wages down by causing economic distress. But the U.S. economy is not in a boom or even thriving. It and other economies are already in distress as a result of the looming oil and energy crisis. In addition to companies scaling back their production and commercial real estate and homeowners face real estate mortgages falling due. Rising interest rates will push the cost of refinancing these mortgages and other debts beyond the ability of debtors to pay out of their falling income.

The result threatens to be a vast transfer of property from debtors to creditors. The United States and Western Europe, thus may experience something like Asian countries did in their currency crisis of 1997-1998. That would be a bonanza for vulture funds to sweep in and acquire real estate and companies at distress prices.

Nobody is suggesting a “Babylonian” solution of suspending debt service for economies that are unable to pay on an economy-wide scale. The West’s creditor-oriented legal systems call for a transfer of property ownership as banks and bondholders take over collateral that has been pledged for debt or property that debtors are forced to sell.

Much of this collateral consists of claims of other companies throughout the economy, so the crisis will engulf the entire social and political system. This is what was threatened back in 2008-2009 when the junk-mortgage and bank-fraud crisis led to a collapse in real estate prices. But the economy’s Ponzi Scheme of increasing wealth by debt leveraging by supplying new credit has reached the limit.

We can now see that the long upsweep since 1945 that seemed to be a series of self-correcting business cycles has been a failed finance-capitalist detour from industrial capitalism that has no automatic self-correcting market forces. The solution must come from outside the market system. And that is something that neither academic economics nor the public relations ideology of free markets (meaning unregulated and privatized economies, Thatcher-Reagan style) has closed its eyes to. The future will call for thinking about the unthinkable. It requires recognition that debts that can’t be paid won’t be.

Michael Hudson’s Killing the Host, The Collapse of Antiquity and The Destiny of Civilization are published by CounterPunch Books.