People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Friday pledged to carry out sweeping right-wing reforms on social issues in Spain, promising to rewrite abortion and euthanasia laws if he wins the Nov. 29 election.

“My main objective is to get [Prime Minister Pedro] Sánchez out of government and start a new chapter in my country,” Feijóo said in an interview on Spain’s Cadena SER radio network, vowing to undo eight years of Socialist rule.

The center-right leader, whose PP has led polls for years, confirmed he would consider forming a governing coalition with far-right Vox if election results required it.

“I cannot rule out doing what the Spanish people tell me,” Feijóo said, acknowledging the polls which currently indicate the PP would need Vox’s support to secure a parliamentary majority. “If they tell me to provide stability with [Vox], I will do so.”

If such a partnership is needed, Vox is expected to demand a deputy prime minister post and at least one ministry, as it has in regional coalitions with the PP. POLITICO’s Madrid Playbook this week reported on speculation that the far-right party could be given the agriculture portfolio, but Feijóo said he had held no formal talks on allocating ministries.

During the interview, the conservative leader vowed to revise Spain’s abortion law, which was amended in 2023 to allow minors over 16 to terminate pregnancies without parental consent. Feijóo said he was keen to involve legal guardians in the decision, arguing that “many 16-year-old girls who have their parents’ support will not want to have an abortion.”

It’s unclear whether that measure would satisfy Vox, which has sought to completely repeal the current abortion law and rejects abortion as a legal right.

The PP leader also pledged to restrict access to euthanasia, which Spain legalized in 2021 for adults with serious, incurable illnesses or severe, chronic and disabling conditions under strict safeguards. “Spain must become the country where it is easiest to sustain life,” he said.

Feijóo also promised to scrap the standalone Equality Ministry as part of a broader effort to reduce the size of government. He insisted the move did not undermine his commitment to feminism. “I grew up in a house with more women than men. How could I think that a woman doesn’t have the same rights as a man?” he said.

Feijóo declined to explicitly commit to further increase the minimum wage, which has risen eight times under Sánchez, from €735 a month in 2018 to €1,221 today. His goal, he said, was to raise “the average wage, so that people’s purchasing power improves.”

The leader of Spain’s conservative People’s Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, confirmed Tuesday that he is negotiating with the far right ahead of the Nov. 29 snap election to secure a majority in the Senate.

“Vox knows how far we can go; they know we have a sense of state,” Feijóo said Tuesday morning in an interview on Spanish radio station COPE, alluding to an alliance with the far-right party. “It would be a mistake to hand control over to Sanchismo,” he added, in reference to Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government.

Feijóo, who is eyeing the premiership, said he was negotiating with Vox to coordinate Senate lists and counter a potential coalition between the governing socialists and other left-wing parties.

“We are going to continue talking to Vox with discretion and respect. If Vox is up to the task, the PP will also be up to the task,” he said, adding that the two parties were working on a deal to not compete with each other in key areas to ensure a conservative majority in the upper house of the Spanish parliament.

Feijóo’s comments echo those of Vox leader Santiago Abascal the day before: He said in a statement Monday he would negotiate with the People’s Party to prevent Sánchez from “stealing the elections,” accusing him of sowing “coercion and violence” to influence the vote.

“Sánchez’s alliance with the far left demands sacrifices from the opposition parties, and we remain willing to reach some kind of agreement that protects the Senate from the deals Sánchez has struck with the far left,” he said.

In a blow to the Socialist prime minister, the left wing has failed to unite ahead of November’s election, with prominent party Podemos opting out of a broad, joint ticket except in the Canary Islands and the Valencia region.

MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s chances of staging a poll-defying election comeback have suffered a serious dent.

Spain’s notoriously fragmented far left has failed to unite on a single ticket ahead of November’s election, which many Sánchez supporters had hoped would mobilize voters, capitalize on the country’s electoral system and increase the prime minister’s hopes of forming a new government.

The left-wing disarray leaves Spain’s conservative People’s Party, led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on track to claim power after eight years of socialist rule in Madrid, as a broader tilt to the right reshapes European politics.

With negotiations stuttering, an exasperated Mónica García, health minister and candidate for the left-wing Broad Front, warned on social media that the left risked getting “trapped in egos, worries, internal disputes and electoral and/or personal calculations that are good for nobody except the right.” 

The Broad Front took shape shortly after the election was called in order to bring together several parties to the left of Sánchez. But after several days of frantic discussions, prominent left-wing party Podemos did not join the united ticket — except in the Canary Islands and the Valencia region — hampering the far left’s overall electoral prospects.

“The only way for [Sánchez] to be able to govern again is for there to be a strong presence to the left of the Socialists,” said Kiko Llaneras, polling analyst for media outlet El País, who pointed out that “the Broad Front isn’t actually that broad.”

He added, “The big question is whether this new movement will be strong enough to allow the left to form a majority — and that’s going to be very difficult.”

Defying the odds

The Broad Front is made up of Sumar, the junior partner in the current Socialist-led government; the Catalan Comuns; the communist-led United Left (IU); Más Madrid; and an array of regional left-wing parties. The lead candidate of the ticket will be Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona.

Spain’s electoral system rewards united platforms, and the Broad Front is not as inclusive as a similar alliance — created in 2023 and including Podemos — which helped Sánchez defy the odds and form a new administration after the last election.

Sumar, the dominant force in the 2026 alliance, has seen its vote share more than halved since 2023 to 5%, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.

“Junior partners in any coalition tend to suffer because it’s difficult for them to implement their agenda and they tend to be less visible,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University.

Sumar has been lacking a high-profile figurehead. Yolanda Díaz, the labor minister and deputy prime minister who was once touted as a potential prime minister-in-waiting, is not running in the election.

The Broad Front ticket, Simón said, “is better than if there had been no agreement at all, but it’s still looking tough for them.”

Amid a last-minute scramble leading up to Friday’s midnight deadline for the registration of electoral alliances, hopes that Podemos, polling at around 3%, might join the ticket were dashed as talks ran aground over candidacies and the left-wing party’s concerns about being subsumed by the alliance. 

Speaking the next day, Colau apologized to voters on the left for the lack of a deal with Podemos and, referring to the fraught negotiations, said that “if someone doesn’t want to sit down at a table, you can’t force them.”

‘We have failed’

Sánchez is banking on a solid performance by his socialists and a resurgence by Sumar and its fellow parties to prevent what most polls suggest is a virtual inevitability: The People’s Party forming a coalition government with the far-right Vox, which has enjoyed a surge thanks to its aggressive stance on immigration.

But there was further disappointment on the left last week — beyond Podemos not appearing in the Broad Front — when hopes of an even wider ticket were dashed.

Gabriel Rufián, the charismatic parliamentary spokesperson for the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), had led a debate in recent months on the need for unprecedented unity on the left going into the next election in order to prevent the far right from entering government. The prospect of Rufián, who has a strong appeal outside Catalonia, leading a joint ticket had stirred excitement among voters.

However, restricted by his own pro-independence ERC, Rufián said he would be running only for that party, ruling him out of involvement in the kind of ambitious, nationwide ticket he had raised hopes of leading. 

“We have failed and, specifically, I have failed,” he said.

Juan Carlos Monedero, a co-founder of Podemos and former senior figure in the party, told POLITICO that “there is no one who has the authority to make a success of [a united left]. Rufián flirted with it, but in the end his loyalty to ERC was more important.”

Polling analyst Llaneras said that, as well as potentially mobilizing voters, greater unity would have provided a boost to the parties to the left of the socialists because of the country’s electoral framework.

“When it comes to converting votes into seats in Spain it’s very hard to do that with less than 10% of the vote,” he said. “Because the electoral districts in Spain are small, dividing the vote means losing a lot of representation. In districts where there are six or seven seats, you can miss out on all of them.”

Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed to this article.