2023-07-24 01:18:00
The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Snchez, candidate for re-election, celebrates after Spain’s general election at the headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), in Madrid (photo: JAVIER SORIANO/AFP)
With practically 100% of the votes counted, the conservative Popular Party (PP) of Alberto Nez Feijo elected 136 deputies, while the left-wing Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) won 122. Its potential allies, the far-right Vox party and the radical left-wing Sumar, won 33 and 31 seats respectively.
“The reactionary bloc of the Popular Party with Vox has been defeated,” Snchez told thousands of supporters gathered in front of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid.
“We are in the majority, those who want Spain to advance, and so to continue,” he added.
The right-wing PP+Vox bloc totals 169 deputies, while the left-wing PSOE-Sumar bloc has 153, but the latter is more likely to gain the support of Basque nationalists, Catalans, and other minority parties to achieve the 176 votes needed for an absolute majority in Congress and take office.
Many of these parties announced that they would never vote for a government that included the far right.
Despite this, Feijo claimed victory and asked to form a government: “As a candidate for the most voted party, I believe it is my duty to try to govern our country”, he told supporters gathered in front of the PP headquarters.
His followers were baffled by the result. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” said a distraught AFP Concha Pea, a 70-year-old woman from Madrid.
“a surprise”, confirmed AFP Antonio Barroso, analyst at consultancy Teneo. “Snchez’s challenge is finding a majority, it all depends on one or two seats,” he added.
Lucky for Sanchez
Pedro Snchez, 51 years old, five of whom have been in power, thus confirms his reputation as a lucky man and validates his risky bet of bringing forward the general elections after the failure of the municipal elections in May.
It did nothing for Feijo to improve the results of the PP in the 2019 elections by 47 seats.
Presumably, starting this Monday, negotiations between the different parties to form a government will begin, and within a month, Parliament will be constituted.
“We will be able to tip the balance,” said Catalan independence deputy Gabriel Rufin, whose ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) party won 7 seats, and who anticipated that he would ask for an independence referendum in exchange for his support for Snchez.
“Our votes will be decisive once again,” agreed Andoni Ortuzar of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which won five seats.
Fear of Vox mobilizes the left
Once the Parliament has been constituted, King Felipe VI will receive representatives of the different parliamentary forces and propose a candidate for the investiture, who must have the support of an absolute majority of the Congress of Deputies, in a first vote, or a simple majority in the following vote.
If, in the end, there is not a viable majority, neither on the right nor on the left, the country will be forced to have new elections within a few months.
Almost all polls gave Feijo a significant victory, and the only question was whether he would need the extreme right, which would represent the return of such a party to the Spanish government for the first time since the end of the Francoist dictatorship in 1975.
Approximately 37.5 million voters were asked to renew the 350-member Congress of Deputies for another four years and elect 208 senators.
On a very hot day at the height of summer, participation was 70%, higher than 2019 (66.23%). Mainly due to the holidays, 2.5 million people voted by mail, a record number.
Relief on the European left
The survival of the Spanish socialists is a relief for the European left, which already lost Italy last year and now governs only half a dozen of the 27 member countries of the European Union (EU). Spain currently occupies the biannual presidency of the EU.
A mobilizing factor for the left in these elections was the fear that the extreme right would enter into a government coalition, especially after PP and Vox signed agreements in several city halls and regional governments.
Snchez emphasized that such an alliance would be “a setback for Spain” and frowned upon in Europe, while the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Daz, said this Sunday night that “people will sleep more peacefully”.
“The Popular Party has lost support with the last campaign moves, while at the same time the Socialist Party has managed to mobilize its electorate,” said Giselle Garca Hpola, professor of political science at the University of Granada.
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