Some 37.5 million eligible voters are expected to flow to more than 60,000 polling stations in Spain on Sunday in order to pick 350 parliament members and 208 senators.
It is the 16th parliamentary election in the history of Spain, where far-right factions are most likely to win the electoral race following their victory in local and municipal elections in May.
The vote begins at 9:00 am local time and closes at 8:00 pm, and initial results are predicted to be made public before midnight.
The main rivals are the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, People’s Party (PP), led by Alberto Feijoo, far-right VOX, led by Santiago Abascal, and SUMAR Alliance, led by Yolanda Diaz.
The list also embraces provincial parties like the Bascque Nationalist Party (PNV), Bildo Party, the Republican Left of Catalonia and Together for Catalonia.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the snap election on May 29 only a day after his Socialists party had been set to rout in municipal and local elections.
Recent opinion polls showed that People’s Party (PP), led by Alberto Feijoo, is likely to win the race, but needs to team up with the far-right VOX in order to secure a sweeping majority of 176 votes in the 350-deputy parliament.
Mail-in vote requests have marked an all-time high ahead of the Spanish election, 2.6 million people requested a mail-in vote, against 1.3 million in the 2019 election and 1.5 million in the 2016 vote.
The general vote comes a few weeks after Spain had assumed the European Union (EU) presidency for a six-month term amid a set of key challenges and four major priorities, notably reindustrializing the EU, making progress on ecological transition, social and economic justice and strengthening European unity.
It is the fifth time for Spain to assume EU presidency from 1 July to 31 December and the last time was in 2010.
Source: Kuwait News Agency
