A divided Spain leaves its future government on hold

The Spanish left the future of their country on hold after the general elections this Sunday, in which neither the right-wing nor the left-wing bloc obtained a sufficient majority to govern, so the pacts will play a fundamental role in both cases.

the conservative Popular Party (PP) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo was the winner with 136 deputiescounted more than 99% of the votes, while the Socialists of the PSOE of the now acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, added 122 seats.

The ultra-right formation Vox de Santiago Abascal lost 19 seats in these elections and was left with 33 deputies in Congresswhile Sumar, the left-wing coalition headed by the second vice president of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, ranked fourth with 31 seats, four fewer than those obtained by its predecessors, United We Can, in the previous elections.

With these results, neither of the two blocks of left and right would add the absolute majority that in Spain is set at 176 seats.

Among the Catalan independence forces, ERC suffered a severe setback, falling from 13 to 7 representatives, Junts per Catalunya lost one and was left with six, while the Basque independentistas of EH-Bildu surpassed the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) for the first time, with six deputies against five.

Despite this decline, these formations may continue to hold the key to the formation of the Government.

The participation in these elections was 70.18 percentalmost 4 points more than the figures registered in the general elections of November 10, 2019, when it was 66.23 percent, according to official data.

An increase in which the vote by mail of 2.4 million voters affected, a historic figure in Spanish democracy fostered by the holiday period in which these elections were called.

The PP advances and the PSOE resists

The PP won 47 more seats this Sunday than in the 2019 elections and confirmed the upward trend of the conservatives since the municipal and regional elections of May 28when the formation of Núñez Feijóo took over traditional socialist fiefdoms and also obtained absolute majorities in the Madrid City Council and the regional government.

That was the trigger for the advancement of the general elections, scheduled for the end of the year, announced by Sánchez the day after the May elections.

“I take charge of forming a government in accordance with the will of the majority of the Spanish people and I ask that no one be tempted to blockade Spain again”, said Núñez Feijóo when claiming that he “it corresponds to try”form a government while being cheered on by his supporters. “All the most voted candidates have governed”, he stressed.

Meanwhile, The PSOE, against all odds, resisted the onslaught of the right and added two more deputies than in the 2019 general elections.

The right had raised these elections as a dispute between “el Sanchismo” or the change of direction in Spain, something that finally continues in the air.

“There are more, many more of us who want Spain to advance, and it will continue to be so”, Pedro Sánchez affirmed before the followers gathered at the doors of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid, to whom he said that his intention is to continue governing in Spain.

The return of bipartisanship

The bipartisanship, embodied by the PP and PSOE, gained strength in these elections and obtained its best result in a decade after several elections in which the emergence of new parties such as Podemos (left), Ciudadanos (liberals) and Vox had led to its worst numbers since the beginning of democracy.

Of these forces, Ciudadanos disappeared from the electoral map, which radically changed the political scenario and pushed this reinforcement of bipartisanship, together with the sharp fall of Vox, which left 19 deputies this Sunday.

The changes did not occur only on the right, but also on the left.

The political space of Unidas Podemos, now within the Sumar platform, has lost more than half of its seats since 2016, at which time the party, then led by Pablo Iglesias, it managed to obtain 71 deputies in the Spanish Congress.

In addition, in these elections the radical left-wing independence formation CUP and the Teruel Existe party, the only representative of what is known as emptied Spain, disappeared from the political scene.