Spain Protest Parties Make Gains In Local Vote

Spain's ruling party has taken a battering in regional and local elections as protest parties made gains.

The conservative People's Party (PP) suffered its worst result in more than 20 years as voters punished Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for four years of severe spending cuts and a string of corruption scandals.

PP and rival Socialists which have alternated in power since the end of dictatorship 40 years ago, but voters opted for change in the shape of new parties - market-friendly Ciudadanos ('Citizens') and anti-austerity Podemos ('We Can').

Both the PP and the Socialists surrendered control of some city halls and regional governments. The vote was seen as a test of the national mood ahead of general elections expected in November.

"It's time for total change," 31-year-old teacher Natalia Cendejas told the Reuters news agency in Madrid.

The two main parties will have to negotiate coalitions with minority parties in the 13 of Spain's 17 regions that voted on Sunday alongside more than 8,000 towns and cities.

The PP lost its absolute majority in regional bastions Madrid and Valencia, where potential left-wing coalitions could send the party into opposition for the first time in 20 years.

In Barcelona, another left-wing coalition backed by Podemos beat pro-independence parties Convergencia i Unio (CiU) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), in a setback for the Catalan separatist movement.

Podemos, often compared to Greek radical left party Syriza, had toned down its policies in recent weeks, scrapping more extreme ideas like defaulting on the national debt.