Sir, – Your editorial perhaps overestimates the extent to which the result of the recent Spanish elections was produced by the British vote to leave the European Union which preceded it ("Ripples from Brexit vote", July 4th).
Far from a singular instance of the “Brexit ripple effect,” the slightly improved result of Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular was in part inflated by the intricacies of the Spanish electoral system, whose disproportionality cost the other parties such as PSOE and Ciudadanos seats, notwithstanding a negligible diminution in their share of the vote. Furthermore, the desire by the people of Spain to end the six-month political deadlock inevitably favours Mr Rajoy, whose party remains the only major right-wing force in Spain.
Ciudadanos is both too centrist and too small to compete for Mr Rajoy’s political space. The left, by contrast, has seen its vote split almost evenly between PSOE and Podemos, meaning that neither party was likely to produce anything near the single-party governments to which Spain has grown accustomed for much of its history.
Another Mr Rajoy government was more likely to be the choice of an exasperated electorate, not one terrified of Brexit. – Yours, etc,
CHRISTOPHER
McMAHON,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.