The Popular Party (PP, right-wing opposition) led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo emerged victorious on Sunday evening, July 23, after near-conclusive results in Spain’s general elections. But does not have a majority to form a government.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo took the win. “As the candidate of the party with the most votes, I feel it is my duty” to try “to form a government,” he told the PP headquarters in Madrid.
After counting more than 99% of the vote, the PP won 136 seats out of a total of 350 in the Congress of Deputies and the far-right party Vox, its only potential ally, won 33 seats.
With that, the PP won 47 more seats than in the previous elections in 2019, but fell far short of the 150 seats Alberto Núñez Feijóo had aimed for. In particular, the PP and Vox, which have lost ground compared to the last election, together only have 169 seats, while the absolute majority is 176. Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party is credited with just 122 MPs, Sumar, his radical left ally, 31.
Sanchez should keep his job
Losing in all the polls, outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party has managed to limit the right-wing opposition’s gains and, thanks to the coalition game, against all odds it still has a chance of remaining in power in extreme cases.
“The declining bloc of the Popular Party and Vox (far-right party) has been defeated,” Pedro Sánchez told enthusiastic socialist activists who had gathered in front of the Socialist Party headquarters in central Madrid. “A lot more of us want Spain to keep moving forward.”
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Given the results, Pedro Sánchez appears capable of assembling 172 MPs in his name, more than the leader of the PP, and could therefore regain power unless Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont’s party votes against him.
Otherwise, Spain, which has already experienced four general elections between 2015 and 2019, would find itself in a new situation of political stalemate and doomed to a new ballot.
Pedro Sánchez is used to poker moves and therefore retains the odds of success on his last bet.
Wanting to regain the initiative after the left’s defeat in local elections at the end of May, he called these snap elections and campaigned out of fear of entering the government of Vox, who with the PP already leads three of the country’s 17 regions, to mobilize the electorate on the left. A strategy that has apparently paid off: the turnout in November 2019 was almost 70%, i.e. 3.5 percentage points more than in the last election.
A scrutinized election in Europe
The socialist Pedro Sánchez, who has been in power for five years, estimated that this election was “very important (…) for the world and for Europe”.
The poll has sparked unusual interest abroad over the possible rise to power of an alliance between the mainstream right and Vox, an ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative and Europhobic party that denies the existence of gender-based violence, criticizes “climate fanaticism” and is outspokenly opposed to LGBT+ and abortion.
Such a scenario, which today seems very unlikely, would have meant the return to power of the extreme right in Spain for the first time since the end of Franco’s dictatorship in 1975, almost half a century ago.
With AFP