Housing and health battles shake up first Andalusian election debate

17-M Andalusian elections

Housing and health battles shake up first Andalusian election debate

The five-way debate ended on Monday without a clear winner and in a tense atmosphere

Antonio Maíllo, María Jesús Montero, Manuel Gavira, Juanma Moreno and José Ignacio García, this Monday during the debate. (EP)

Héctor Barbotta

Seville

05/05/2026 Actualizado a las 17:16h.

The set of RTVE's regional branch in Seville was transformed on Monday into a battlefield where reality seemed to change according to the speaker.

The main candidates to be the next president of the Junta de Andalucía came together on Monday night for their first debate of the Andalusian election campaign prior to the 17 May ballot.

There was no room for pleasantries when the stopwatch began to count down the seconds of a contest that, beyond the acronyms, was fought in the terrain of everyday life: housing and doctor's appointments.

Juanma Moreno, the current conservative Partido Popular president of the regional government, appeared with the countenance of someone guarding an inheritance he considers to be buoyant.

Meanwhile the left-wing bloc endeavoured to describe an Andalucía on a downward slope towards the degradation of its public services, while Manuel Gavira of hard-right Vox tried to capitalise on youth discontent under the prism of exclusion.

Economy

The economy served as the first major point of controversy among the candidates. While Moreno defended that the current prosperity is born of his reforms and a stability that spurs economic activity, his opponents drew a landscape of emergencies that shows its cruellest face in healthcare and housing.

"For Moreno Bonilla, housing is a business, not a right," declared Socialist PSOE's María Jesús Montero, attempting to break the narrative of official prosperity.

The contrast was absolute between the commitment to market intervention suggested by left wing group leaders Antonio Maíllo and José Ignacio García, and Moreno's recipe, which entrusts the solution to an increase in supply and the protection of homeowners.

Vox's Gavira limited himself to pointing the finger at migrants as the cause of all ills, a line that would become a constant throughout the night whatever the topic addressed.

The debate on housing was the one that most clearly showed the different models proposed by the parties

The Vox candidate, with an eye on the neighbourhoods where emancipation is a chimera, decided to link the rent problem to migratory pressure.

It was here that the temperature suddenly rose. José Ignacio García did not miss the opportunity to confront the Vox representative to deny that foreigners monopolise public aid, accusing him of diverting his gaze from those he considers to be the real culprits, many of whom do not have Spanish passports either. It was a moment of dialectical tension that made it clear that, in this campaign, controlling the narrative about the scarcity of resources will be a battle of attrition.

Health

The health section was no less harsh. The management of waiting lists and accusations of an alleged privatisation drive on the part of the Andalusian government hovered over every speech. Juanma Moreno tried to shield himself by boasting about an investment that is above the national average, promising a health guarantee law to avoid budgetary setbacks such as those that, he recalled, the Junta suffered while Montero was in the central government.

However, the opposition did not allow the debate to stop at the balance sheet figures. Maíllo appealed to the "ethics of compassion" and reminded Andalusians that they should believe their own eyes when they go to health centres, and not the official stories, while García rescued the institutional silence after the breast cancer screening scandal.

The president avoided direct melee for much of the evening, preferring an institutional tone that contrasted with Montero's vehemence, even if the viewer found him more subdued than usual. The Socialist candidate did not hesitate to recall her time as a regional minister, assuring that Andalusians remember the time with pride, while accusing her successor of weakening the system to favour private interests. Moreno questioned whether the collective memory is really so generous with the Socialist administration.

The economy also revealed two antagonistic readings of the same territory. Unemployment, which has fallen from the 37 per cent threshold to 14 per cent, was the main shield of the candidate for re-election.

But the medal for this improvement has many aspirants; Montero and Maíllo claimed that the central government was responsible for this progress, attributing it to the labour reform that the PP opposed. Prosperity thus became an elastic concept that everyone stretched towards their electoral interests.

In all the sections, the Vox candidate focused his arguments on blaming the migrants

In the final stretch, financing and possible pacts ended up outlining the possible alliances. Montero and Maíllo closed ranks against what they consider to be a drift towards Vox policies on the part of the regional government.

The debate concluded without a clear winner on the points, but with one absolute certainty: the distance between the proposed models of society is an abyss that is unlikely to be closed before the ballot boxes pass sentence.

"Andalusians have to think with what their eyes see and not what they are told", Maíllo summed up, in a phrase that could well serve as an epitaph for a night of conflicting figures and parallel realities.