By Belén Carreño and Inti Landauro
MADRID (Reuters) -Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a snap national election on Monday and his main conservative rival urged voters to make him the country's next leader, after left-wing parties suffered a heavy defeat in a regional ballot.
Sanchez, who had often said he wanted to see out a full term in office, portrayed Sunday's rout as a clear vote of no confidence in his coalition government.
The mainstream People's Party (PP) of Alberto Nunez Feijoo won outright control of two regional governments and could run six more in partnership with the far-right Vox, whose leader Santiago Abascal said he was ready to form coalitions with the PP. In all, 12 regions were contested.
Sanchez, saying he felt compelled to "take personal responsibility for the results", announced the national election for July 23.
He had previously said the ballot would be in December, near the end of Spain's rotating presidency of the European Union, which begins on July 1.
Sanchez said he now needed to "seek a clarification about the wishes of Spain's people, a clarification about the political direction that the government should take, and about the political forces that should lead the country through that phase."
"...I believe it is necessary to respond and submit our democratic mandate to the will of the people," he said in a televised speech that took even some of his political allies and members of his closest circle by surprise.
Sunday's results indicate the PP and the far-right Vox could unseat Sanchez and his Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) if they replicated that performance at national parliamentary level.
"The sooner (the election), the better," Feijoo told a press conference, asking voters to give his party a "clear majority" to run the country.
"I ask Spaniards to make me Spain's next prime minister," he said, adding that he had held informal talks with Vox over the outcome of Sunday's election.
(Reporting by Belen Carreño and Inti Landauro; writing by Charlie Devereux and John Stonestreet; editing by John Stonestreet and Aislinn Laing)
