The right-wing victory predicted by opinion polls in Spain’s general election failed to materialise on Sunday evening when results were announced. Instead, the country faces into a period of political uncertainty, with no clear winner emerging in a vote which saw a reassertion of the dominance of the two traditional parties of power, the Socialists and the Popular Party (PP), at the expense of smaller groupings.
While the centre-right PP clearly emerged as the largest party, it fell seven seats short of achieving a majority with its preferred political partner, the far-right Vox. Current prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists and their left-wing allies may lag behind the two parties of the right, but Sánchez is better placed to assemble the numbers required to grant him another term in office.
How did Pedro Sanchez pull off an upset in the Spanish election?
However, that path to power is far from straightforward and long and difficult negotiations lie ahead. Sánchez will need to rely more than before on support from Basque and Catalan nationalists, who may demand a high price in return for the votes or abstentions needed to elect a minority government. Together for Catalonia, a separatist party with seven seats, could have a particularly pivotal role.
Members of the new parliament will be sworn in on August 17th, after which King Felipe VI will summon political leaders to Zarzuela Palace to discover whether a new government can be formed.
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PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo will argue that there is no precedent in Spanish politics for any party except the largest to be asked to form a government. But the parliamentary arithmetic now clearly favours Sánchez, whose decision to call a snap mid-summer election immediately after suffering a sweeping defeat in regional votes in May now looks more astute than it did a week ago.
If Sánchez is mandated by the king to form a government, he has two months to do so. Should he fail, another general election seems inevitable by early 2024. This may be the preferred course of events for the PP, although it remains to be seen whether Feijóo, who was widely deemed to have faltered in the final week of a bruising, personalised campaign, will still be party leader.
What does seem likely is that Sanchez will see out the remainder of Spain’s EU presidency, which runs until December. This will come as a relief to those who feared a new government that included Vox could use the position to slow-walk or even derail important European legislation on environmental and other issues.
The far-right party’s climate denialism, along with its anti-immigrant rhetoric and attempts to roll back the rights of women and LGBT people, received a welcome electoral rebuff on Sunday, a reminder that the rise of extremist intolerance in European politics is far from inevitable.