Spain’s governing Socialists won the country’s third election in four years. However, the centrist Socialist have fallen short of a majority.
In his victory speech, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the party’s big challenges were to fight inequality, advance co-existence and halt corruption.
“The future has won and the past has lost,” he told cheering supporters.
Media reports said:
Sánchez’s party polled 29%. The party will need the help of either left-wing Podemos and regional parties, or the centre right, to form a government.
During his time in office, Sánchez has raised the minimum wage, appointed a female-dominated cabinet and promised to bring in laws defining rape as sex without clear consent.
In a negative development, for the first time since military rule ended in Spain in the 1970s, Vox, a far-right party, is set to enter parliament. Vox had no seats in 2016. Vox opposes multiculturalism, unrestricted migration, and what it calls “radical feminism”.
The presence of Vox could fracture the right wing.
However, its meteoric rise is largely due to its ultra-nationalist rhetoric that advocates the “defense of the Spanish nation to the end” and a hard line against separatists in Catalonia.
PP collapses
The other big story of the election was the collapse in support for the rightist Popular Party (PP), which governed Spain until it was dumped from power in May 2018 in a no-confidence vote.
In its worst election ever, the PP won just 66 seats, down from 137 in the previous parliament. The PP’s future was uncertain on Sunday evening: the party lost more than half of its 137 MPs from 2016. 3.8 million voters gave up on the party that until last May was governing the country, under former leader Mariano Rajoy.
Turnout was 75.8%, the biggest for several years and 9% higher than the previous election in 2016.
After a decade of right wing rule
According to official results from all the votes counted, the Socialist party will have 122 seats in parliament, returning to a majority after more than a decade of PP rule.
After one of Spain’s most divisive and open-ended election in decades, the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) is the major winners of the 2019 elections.
Now, political alliances will mark the road ahead for months in order to form a government.
The left-wing parties United Podemos (UP) gained 42, and the three nationalist parties Catalunya Republican Left (ERC) 15, Together for Catalunya (JxCAT) 7 seats and Basque party (EH Bildu) with 4 seats.
“We would have liked a better result, but it is enough to achieve our two main objectives: to stop the right and the far-right and to build a left coalition government,” General Secretary of UP and legislator Pablo Iglesias said after the Spanish electoral body announced the official figures.
By mere mathematical conclusions, a left coalition could be formed between the PSOE and the left-wing parties, adding more than the 176 seats needed to form a government. However, things aren’t so clear as the right also has enough to entice the Socialists to form a government.
The PP won 66 seats, Citizens 57, and the Vox party 24 seats, making it the first party with such politics to sit in Spain’s parliament since 1982.
The 2019 process showed the demise of the conservative PP with 66 seats, meaning less than half of those won in the 2016 elections. Thus, a less alarmist reading of the figures can see that most of the Vox votes migrated from past PP voters, which now can clearly identify as far-right extremists.
At the same time, the left-wing UP lost seats, which Iglesias called out as due to internal issues that will have to be fixed looking forward to local elections.
Overall results show a divided Spain, where alliances and negotiating between political parties will have to happen in order to obtain a majority.
The election results could lead to months of negotiations in order to form a government in a bitterly divided parliament.
In the Senate, with 80.67 percent counted, the PSOE achieved 123 senators and the PP, 55. In third and fourth place would be ERC (10) and PNV (9).
After a tense campaign dominated by issues such as national identity and gender equality, the likelihood that any coalition deal will take weeks or months to be brokered will feed into a broader mood of political uncertainty across Europe.
Dear Countercurrents Team,
The Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party was founded and named Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol in 1879, in the tavern Casa Labra, two blocks away from the very center of old downtown Madrid, by the socialist politician Pablo Iglesias (1850-1925). He was a true socialist, internationalist and anti-war activist.
However, short after general Franco passed away, the party leaders gave up socialist and working class ideals, aims and methods, mainly marxism, and turned it into a Social Democratic Party.
Later on things fell apart: Felipe Gonzalez, Secretary General, said in 1976 that I am above all a social democrat. He also said that he can stand for the rule of law from the State sewers. In his time as Spanish primer minister Spain became a NATO member. His minister of defense becam NATO Secretary General, remember Yugoslavia? Then he became Mr. PESC.
The last PSOE leader before the current one took Spain out of the Iraq war, just to send Spanish troops to Afghanistan. PSOE governments did nothing to stop filthy rich individuals and corporations to use tax heavens abroad while at the same time reduced taxes for the rich at home.
OK, the PSOE loves homosexuals getting married, while the Popular Party does the same on sufferance, but this is the main difference between them.
There are only a few real leftist groups in Spain, while the are four right wing parties. From center right to extreme right> PSOE, Ciudadanos, Partido Popular and VOX.
Try to explain what the hell is going on in this country after 40 years of military dictatorship plus another forty of pseudodemocracy afterwards, marred by corruption at every;level and sector of the administration, closer and closer to the US and NATO policies, obedient servant of the WB and FMI, and proudly friend of Israel and the imperialist EU cointries and their lackeys like Guaido.