<p>MADRID — A skeptic of sweeping pandemic lockdowns vowed Wednesday to use her party’s victory in a regional Madrid election to remain as a “counterpower” to the left-wing coalition of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.</p>
<p>Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s Popular Party nearly obtained an absolute majority in the legislative assembly of the wealthy region. The election’s outcome opens a fresh chapter in Spain’s volatile politics by putting conservatives back in the race to control the national government.</p>
<p>The win “is going to be a stimulus and a change of cycle," Díaz Ayuso told Spanish station EsRadio the day after the Popular Party won 44% of the vote in the regional election, more than the total secured by all of its center-to-left rivals.</p>
<p>“We will continue here being the counterweight and the counterpower that are needed (against Sánchez)," she said.</p>
<p>The Popular Party won 65 of the Madrid Assembly’s 136 seats on Tuesday, more than twice the number it won in the previous election two years ago. The far-right Vox party won 13 seats – one more than in 2019 – to give the right wing 20 more seats than the 58 picked up by Sánchez’s Socialists, the anti-austerity United We Can party and More Madrid, an upstart party that echoes the rise of the European Greens and becomes the opposition leader.</p>
<p>Vox has offered support to Díaz Ayuso, whose victory reduces the need to form a coalition government.</p>
<p>Citizens, the center-right liberal party that was the junior partner in the regional government until Díaz Ayuso called the snap election two months ago, collected less than 4% of the vote and lost all of its 26 Madrid Assembly seats. Citizens was once seen as a possible hinge-party to form governments with the left and the right, but it is now fighting for relevance.</p>
