The leader of the People’s Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, with his arm raised on the balcony of the Conservative party July 23 in Madrid. OSCAR DEL POZO / AFP
The night is likely to be particularly uncertain in Spain after more than 99.8% of ballot papers were counted for the general election on Sunday evening, July 23. As expected, the Popular Party (PP, Conservatives), led by Galician Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, leads with 136 seats, 47 more than four years ago, ahead of the Socialist Party (PSOE), led by outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, which won 122 seats.
But for the right-wing party, which was aiming for 150 seats, even in the event of an alliance with Vox, a majority seems out of reach. The far-right party, which took third place, is credited with 33 seats, ahead of the left-wing Sumar Movement, an ally of Mr Sanchez, who would get 31 seats.
The right-wing bloc would thus get 169 seats, far from an absolute majority, which stands at 176 seats in Spain. On the other hand, the left bloc, with potentially 154 seats, seems paradoxically better placed to stay in power thanks to the support of several small Basque and Catalan parties.
“The declining PP-Vox bloc is defeated,” Sanchez told enthusiastic socialist activists who had gathered outside the Socialist Party headquarters in central Madrid. “A lot more of us want Spain to keep moving forward,” he added, hoping the alliance game would keep him in power.
However, Mr. Feijóo achieved the victory. The PP had “won the elections,” he exclaimed from the balcony of party headquarters, reaffirming his intention to “form a government” and calling on the Socialists not to “block” such a government.
There is a risk of a political standstill and new elections
Pedro Sanchez in front of his supporters at the Socialist Party polling station in Madrid on July 23. EMILIO MORENATTI / AP
“It’s a real surprise, the Socialist Party has put up a much better fight than expected. There are two scenarios: [le maintien de] sanchez [au pouvoir] or snap elections,” Antonio Barroso, an analyst at Teneo, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Mr Feijóo would like to rule as the winner of the elections, but without an absolute majority he would need the abstentions of the Socialists in an investiture vote in Parliament, who ‘will not give him that majority’, Mr Barroso continues.
Indeed, given the results, Mr Sánchez seems capable of assembling 172 MPs in his name, more than the leader of the PP, and could therefore return to power unless the party of Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont 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.
Should the left remain in power, it would come as a major surprise: all opinion polls published up to Monday – in Spain their dissemination is banned five days before the election – considered a Conservative victory almost certain after the left’s defeat in local elections in May. Moreover, it was this failure that convinced Mr. Sanchez, who had been in power for five years, to carry out this early vote.
Mr. Sanchez could have benefited from a strong mobilization of the left, as turnout reached more than 70%, ie 4 points more than in the last election in November 2019. Almost 2.5 million Spaniards – out of 37.5 million potential voters – voted in particular by postal vote, a record number since this election was the first organized in the middle of summer.
Also read: Article reserved for our subscribers. Parliamentary elections in Spain: Both right-wing and left-wing voters are mobilizing in the polling stations
An election is “very important for Europe”
The country was feverishly awaiting the results of these general elections, which were also being closely watched elsewhere in Europe for the possibility of an alliance between the PP and the ultra-conservative Vox party coming to power – ultra-nationalist, Europhobic, denying the existence of gender-based violence, criticizing “climate fanaticism”, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion.
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Such a scenario would have marked 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. Mr Feijoo had said after the vote he hoped Spain would “enter a new era” but on Sunday night everything indicated he would not achieve his goal.
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This election is “very important (…) for the world and for Europe”, appreciated Mr. Sanchez for his part, who scarecrowed Vox to exploit the fear of the extreme right. He denounced “the tandem of the extreme right and the extreme right” and believed that a PP/Vox coalition government would be “not only a setback for Spain” in terms of the right, but “also a serious setback for the European project”.
In a column published in Le Monde on Sunday, former British Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown estimated that Vox’s coming to power – which he said would mean “the capitulation of the Spanish Conservatives to the far right” – “would have repercussions across the continent of Europe”.