Gross! Valencia likes PP!

The Partido Popular, that is, not the bodily sort.

Yesterday, Spain’s elections took place and although the reigning socialist party (PSOE) retained its hold on power nationally, the conservative party (PP) extended its majority in the Valencian Community. This is troubling and surprising to the writers of HolaValencia.

True, we’ve only been in Valencia for about a month, and have mostly interacted with young, urbane people, so perhaps our sense of the region’s political make-up was skewed. But we thought the city was pretty liberal. I mean, you can’t walk through El Carmen without tripping over a drag queen dry-humping his boyfriend. And you wouldn’t normally associate a society that throws a party as crazy as Las Fallas with button-down conservatism. At first I thought it was just because of the provinces, but Valencia city gave a 15-point advantage to the PP, as well.

Conservative parties, be they the PP or the GOP, are anathema to Juergen and I. Mainly, because they’re xenophobic, or pretend to be for the sake of votes, and our free-roaming lifestyle is dependent on the friendly acceptance of foreigners. And also because most conservative parties would love to strip gays of all their rights. Not nice!

So, why is Valencia is so heavily aligned with the PP? Are all the wonderful people we’ve met here secretly wishing we’d go home and marry sweet girls from our home towns? Please, leave a comment if you have any theories!