Possible solutions to the close parliamentary elections in Spain

The scenarios that open up before Spain after the elections on Sunday they are basically that Pedro Sánchez repeat the government, that the right wing rules in a minority or that the elections are repeated.

a right-wing government

Predicted as the winner by all polls, the conservative Popular Party (PP) won the election but well below its expectations.

With 136 seats, he falls far short of an absolute majority of 176 seats in the Congress of Deputies, even with the support of the 33 representatives of the far-right Vox party, his only potential ally.

As the winner of the elections, the PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, claimed the right to govern in a minority and hastened to ask Sánchez’s Socialist Party “and the rest of the political forces not to block (the formation of a) PP government”.

“There is no president of the Government of Spain who has governed after losing the elections,” Feijóo launched, in a message to Sánchez.

“The problem for the PP is that it needs the support of Vox and other parties to govern. However, regionalist parties such as the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) are going to find it very difficult to support a government that includes Vox”, which generally attacks them and labels them as enemies of Spain, said Antonio Barroso, an analyst at the consultancy Teneo.

The PP could also manage to form a government if the Socialists abstain in an investiture vote, but they have already said they will not.

Pedro Sanchez hold on

This is what Alberto Núñez Feijóo fears.

Second party in number of deputies, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Pedro Sánchez, which called these early elections after the debacle of its formation in the local elections in May, has 122 seats and can count on the 31 of Sumar, his radical leftist ally.

To have any chance of staying in power, the left will also need to secure the support of small regionalist parties, as it has done in recent years.

Among them are the Catalans from ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) and the Basques from Bildu, considered political heirs of the extinct armed organization ETA.

But that will not be enough: he will also need the abstention of the Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) party. Its leaders, including the notorious pro-independence supporter Carles Puigdemont, have already made it clear that such an eventuality would come at a price.

If these conditions are met, Sánchez could count on the support of 172 deputies, few more than the PP-Vox alliance, but enough in a second investiture vote, in which only a simple majority is required.

new elections

According to analysts, it is the most likely hypothesis.

If neither the left nor the right bloc manage to form a government, elections will be called, a priori before the end of the year.

The new Parliament will be constituted on August 17. The parties can then negotiate, without time limit, to find a majority.

However, from the moment an investiture vote fails, King Felipe VI has to dissolve Parliament two months later and call new elections.

A blockade situation that Spain knows well, because between 2015 and 2019 the country experienced four general elections.

Source: AFP