Madrid's regional election was really interesting and here's why:

1. With a population of 6.8 million, Madrid is Spain's 3rd largest autonomous community (after Andalusia and Catalonia).

It has Spain's highest GDP per capita and is the richest one in absolute terms - slightly smaller than Finland.

2. The Madrid region has been governed by PP since 1995, when 12 years of PSOE rule ended. Esperanza Aguirre led the region from 2003 to 2012. She's known for her admiration of Margaret Thatcher as well as numerous corruption scandals.

On Tuesday, PP - led by Isabel Díaz Ayuso - got 44.7% of the vote (+22.5). She managed to impose herself as a challenger of PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez by adopting a lax approach to corona restrictions and aiming for a broad right-wing voter base.

A central symbol of this attitude towards pandemic management are bars. The possibility to have a caña in a bar

Or in Ayuso's terms:

Incidentally, there are also contradictions between PP-led regions in terms of managing the pandemic. PP's internal post-pandemic dynamic will for this (and other) reasons be interesting.

While Madrid is not the rest of Spain, Ayuso's strong result presents a serious challenge to the central government (next general election scheduled for 2023). PP can't expect to reach Madrid numbers in a general election, but this is promising for them.

3. One of the reasons behind PP's strong numbers is that VOX and Cs supporters voted for Ayuso. VOX's modest score (basically stagnating around 9%) might be higher in a general election.

VOX didn't break through in low income neighbourhoods and it scored above its average in many of the wealthier ones. There's similar data on the far right in other European countries.

Ayuso doesn't have an absolute majority in the regional council. On election night, VOX leader Santiago Abascal announced that their seats are at Ayuso's "disposal".

It remains to be seen if VOX will enter the government or not. Abascal's announcement should not be interpreted as purely submissive - it reflects the need for VOX to be normalised and continue to be associated with PP in building majorities.

4. Cs went from 3rd force and 26/132 seats to 0 overnight.

3 months ago in Catalonia, they went from 1st force and 36 seats to 6 seats overnight. Brutal.

The reason a snap election was held in Madrid on Tuesday was a pact between PSOE and Cs in Murcia, against PP. Spain is not a two-party country anymore, but there are two camps with no cordon sanitaire.

This de facto two-camp arrangement was challenged by Cs in Murcia. Therefore, PP called a snap election in its stronghold Madrid, which it governed with the support of Cs (Machiavellian!).

Cs has recently tried to free itself from being anchored in a so called Colón (Columbus) tripartite with PP & VOX - named after a symbolic image from February 2019 with the leaders of the three parties next to one another at an anti-Sánchez demonstration at Madrid's Plaza Colón.

While being liberal, Cs opted for an authoritarian position as a response to the rise of Catalan independentism (Cs was born as an anti-Catalanist party in Catalonia). This bore fruit in the Catalan elections in 2017 as well as the general election in April 2019.

After disastrous results in November 2019 and Catalonia in February 2021, it's become clear that Cs needs a new direction and can't just be another hardline right-wing party competing with PP and VOX. An expression of this are regional majorities built by PP, VOX and Cs.

Tuesday's result is a slap in the face for those in Cs trying to make the party kingmakers between PP and PSOE. However, there are still many question marks surrounding Spain's political centre and Cs can play its (currently bad) hand in advantageous ways.

5. PSOE lost this election on several levels. Just 2 years ago, it was the biggest group in the regional council. It led the opposition. On Tuesday it dropped over 10 points, and (narrowly) lost the leadership of the opposition to Más Madrid.

The fact that PP managed to turn the election into a plebiscite on Sánchez, and that PSOE was not able to respond to the challenge, is significant. PSOE tried to distance itself from Unidas Podemos, and then changed its mind. Hesitant and unreliable.

PSOE's first reaction is to throw its Madrid leader Ángel Gabilondo (who was an invisible candidate in an intense election campaign) under the bus. But PSOE can't return to a pre-4M after this result. The challenge is there.

6. The campaign of Unidas Podemos was personified in the party's founder and most central figure Pablo Iglesias. He stepped down from being Vice Prime Minister to contest the election when PP called it in March.

Iglesias' campaign, focusing on the threats to democracy that the far right (and its allies in PP) represent, did not yield the results the party hoped for. Iglesias did not manage to convince Más Madrid to run a joint candidacy (presumably led by him).

In 2019, UP was dangerously close to the 5% threshold. This time, largely thanks to Iglesias' candidacy, they were safely at around 7%. This is still less than the party expected.

A key characteristic of Iglesias' candidacy and the antagonism with the far right is the death threats that he (and other members of the Spanish government) received during the campaign.

One of these threats consisted of bullets sent by mail. These threats were trivialised during a debate by VOX's candidate Rocío Monasterio, further amplified by PP (later retracted). Iglesias walked out of the debate & this was highly mediatised. The other debates were cancelled.

On Tuesday night, Iglesias announced that he's resigning from all his public mandates. This has prompted a wave of support and gratitude towards Iglesias. This is the closing of the first circle of 15M.

7. One of Tuesday's surprises was Más Madrid, gaining 2.4 points and thereby becoming the second political force in the region and the leader of the opposition to Ayuso and VOX.

MM was born out of a schism within UP between Iglesias and Iñigo Errejón - the latter having left and built a new political subject for the 2019 regional elections. MM is in alliance with Green EQUO Verdes, sharing a group in the central parliament as well as the Madrid region.

MM's positive result can at least partially be attributed to its lead candidate Mónica García. She has co-coordinated MM since July 2020 and is a healthcare professional who has worked on the frontline of the pandemic treating COVID-19 patients in an ICU.

While MM has a background in the Spanish left, it has also managed to successfully go beyond traditional boundaries and generated a new political subject basing itself in different progressive traditions.

One of these traditions is the Greens and the Green wave that has manifested itself in different parts of Europe in recent years. An emphasis on ecology and feminism is perhaps the clearest sign of MM's political aspirations.

It must also be noted that García's & MM's campaign was successful thanks to solid groundwork. In possibly the most symbolic neighbourhood of the campaign, working class suburb Vallecas, MM is now stronger than both PSOE & UP. And the combined left is stronger than the right.

MM's result is a challenge on many levels. First, it sets the stage for preparations ahead of the 2023 general election in Spain (in case nothing unforeseen happens before 2023).

In addition to Más Madrid, is there a Más País? How does it relate to UP? To progressive regionalists? There is more to progressive Spain than Leftists and Greens.

Second, it embodies an attempt for a new kind of progressivism in Southern Europe. The radical Left, often in alliance with Greens, has had some success in previous years, but there are many open questions as to the future of progressive politics in Europe's South.

(Post-)crisis Southern Europe has been a laboratory of leftist populism, which Syriza, M5S and Podemos are all different articulations of.

Right now, MM is not an isolated case. The Greens anticipate good results in upcoming elections in Croatia and Cyprus.

None of this can be separated from the fact that polling ahead of Germany's general election in September puts Greens in the most probable government coalitions, the colours of which are to be seen.

Some have been keen to announce the death of leftist populism, especially at the end of Corbynism. What if 4M is an (at least) equally significant date? Or 26S in Germany? And that progressive aspirations don't die, but take new shapes?

8. As a Green, I am excited about the prospect of a more geographically inclusive Green project in Europe. I have all reason to believe that Más Madrid is a part of that project - especially as they themselves are clearly orienting themselves towards Greens.

I felt a rush of emotion on Tuesday night when Pablo Iglesias announced his departure. It seems like that emotion was shared by many Spaniards, probably stronger than mine.

But I also saw an opening, and that gives me hope.

Spain will continue to inspire Northerners like myself as to what anti-fascist, social and feminist politics can look like.

In the future with a stronger emphasis on our shared existential political battle - the climate crisis.