Madrid (BLAZETRENDS) of year.
The official data will be published over the next few hours, but once the voting is over, the exit polls can be disseminated.
Turnout higher than in past regional elections
Up to two hours before the polling stations closed, participation was 51.47 percent, with 1.54 points more than in the previous municipal and regional elections of 2019, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior of Spain.
Election day passed with hardly any incidents, except for some delays in the opening of a few of the 23,000 polling stations or specific problems with the ballots in some others.
In addition, there were also a few arrests of citizens who refused to take part in the polling stations despite having been summoned to do so, something that is a crime in Spain.
The vote took place with police reinforcement in some places such as Melilla, a Spanish city in North Africa, where the postmen who brought votes to those tables were escorted, after alleged attempts to fraud in voting by mail were detected in recent days, something unusual so far in the country.
the electorate
A total of 35.6 million voters were called to the polls in these elections, in which the Assemblies of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in North Africa, and the island councils, exclusive administrative entities of the Canary Islands.
On this electoral day, 1.7 million young people between the ages of 18 and 23 had the possibility of voting for the first time, 5% of the total census, and 414,000 foreigners residing in Spain.
The vote is proposed as a kind of preamble to the general elections that, if they are not brought forward, must be held at the end of the year in Spain.