Spanish fragmented political landscape after elections

By Wydad El Jaouhari

LONDON, 30 April. - (ANA) - After weeks of campaigning and battling against the rise of the far-right and populist party, Vox, Spain’s Socialists won the elections on Sunday 28th April. It was the third election in less than four years as it was called in February after the parliament rejected the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s budget for 2019.

Vox, founded in 2014 and led by Santiago Abascal, won 24 parliamentary seats, making a breakthrough in the Parliament for a far-right party for the first time since the 1970s after the death of the Spanish dictator Franco and the restoration of democracy.

Vox’s party, purely based on vowing to ‘make Spain great again’ by having populist views on various topics such as immigration, Islam, or even opposing abortion and same-gender marriage as well as feminism, grew rapidly and saw an increase from 3 600 to 36 000 members in only 2 years despite being seen by many as fascist.

The unstable political landscape of Spain since the Catalan crisis of 2017 as well as the success of the US President Donald Trump’s campaign has contributed to the rise of Vox, notably on social media including Facebook or Instagram where the party regularly publishes its programmes and discredits its opponents.

This win for the far-right party is an added concern for the European cohesion given the fact that the European Parliament elections are taking place on 26 May. Moreover, the success of Vox was welcomed by Matteo Salvini, leader of the extreme far-right League in Italy who recently announced an alliance between far-right parties of Europe to campaign during the forthcoming European elections.

The highly fragmented outcome saw the conservative vote split three ways, with the surging of the far right and centrist groups eclipsing the mainstream center-right Popular Party. Spain’s Popular Party (PP) which previously governed from 2011 until a vote of no-confidence in 2018 had done badly gaining only 66 seats and losing 71 seats since the 2016 elections.

Spain's governing Socialist party won the most votes but has fallen far short of an overall majority. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in front of supporters in Madrid on Sunday that, “the future has won and the past has lost”. Winning approximatively 29% of the votes which translates to 123 seats in the Parliament, his Socialist Party (PSOE) is in the lead but still has not achieved a majorty to govern on its own. This means it needs to form a government with other smaller parties. The majority being 176 seats in the 350 seat Parliament.

The socialist leader is now facing the challenge of building a coalition, despite the almost-guaranteed support of the party of the radical-left Podemos which won 35 seats, a big drop from 70 seats. Support is needed from smaller parties such as the Basque nationalist party but the alliance with Ciudadanos, winning 57 seats, will be hard to achieve after a clear rejection of a coalition on both sides by Socialists supporters as well as Albert Riviera, the Ciudadanos leader.

Analysts contemplate a possible coalition between the Socialist and Ciudadanos parties, despite bitter rhetoric exchanged between their leaders during the campaign. But the results give no hope for the conservative dream coalition between the Popular, Ciudadanos and VOX parties, which had been suggested by leaders of the three parties.
The question now is whether Sanchez is able to form a coalition government with or without Ciudadanos despite differences of opinion and policies.


AB/ANA/30 April 2019 - - -