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Spain's PM and PSOE party leader Pedro Sánchez delivers a speech on the day of the general election in Madrid.
Who will govern Spain?
Two months ago, when Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez responded to a crushing regional election defeat by calling a snap national election, we gave him slim odds of keeping his job. But we did point out that Sánchez had the survival skills of a political cockroach.
His gamble paid off.
On Sunday night, Sánchez did it again: When the right seemed on the cusp of returning to power after five years, the ruling left-wing PSOE party outperformed its best expectations by improving its 2019 result and coming in a close second to the right-wing People's Party. Meanwhile, the far-right Vox Party lost 19 seats, and the conservative bloc fell just short of the outright majority most polls had predicted.
But the PSOE — along with the Sumar (Add) coalition of far-left forces — also didn’t win enough seats to repeat the so-called "Frankenstein" left-wing coalition government backed by some Catalan and Basque pro-independence parties that the PP and Vox had vowed to replace.
So, what happens next? Good question.
For the PM to get the votes he needs to stay in power, he'd have to negotiate with Junts (Together), a hardcore Catalan secessionist party that will demand an independence referendum in exchange. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo could also try to win support from the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which has backed them in the past but would require Vox be out of the government. Don’t count on either happening.
If the hung parliament fails to deliver a government two months after the first vote, Spaniards will have to do it all over again — for the third time since 2015.Vox leader Santiago Abascal speaks to the crowd with Spain's national flag in the background at a campaign stop in Barcelona.
Ahead of the Spanish election, the political pendulum is swinging right
More than three years ago, Spain ushered in its first coalition government since democracy was restored in the late 1970s. But that experiment — a minority government led by the left-wing PSOE Party with the far-left Podemos Party as a junior partner, backed by nationalist and separatist forces — might soon give way to another coalition that'll swing the country sharply to the right.
On Sunday, Europe's fourth largest economy holds a snap parliamentary election abruptly called by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez just hours after the PSOE got trounced in a regional vote in mid-May. And, unless the polls are completely off, he’ll be ousted from office by the combined forces of the right-wing People's Party and the far-right Vox.
You might think that after Italy, Finland, and Sweden, Spain is only the latest European country where the extreme right is on the rise, and that it probably also has to do with immigration. You’d be wrong — and not because Vox is fond of migrants.
Spain's lurch to the right is actually driven by uniquely Spanish culture wars over what conservatives refer to as "gender ideology" and Spanish nationalism (a catchall term for fierce opposition to the Catalan and Basque independence movements).
First, the PP and Vox have called out the left-wing government for going too far on gender equality. Two poignant scandals were the botched drafting of the controversial "Only yes means yes" sexual consent law — which resulted in more than 1,000 convicted sex offenders getting their sentences reduced — and passing a law that allows anyone over 16 to change sex without parental consent.
Second, the conservative opposition has blasted Sánchez for pardoning the Catalan politicians who attempted to secede in 2017, and for watering down the crime of secession. He also stoked Spanish nationalist flames by cutting deals with Bildu, a far-left party which still considers Basque terrorism a legitimate "armed struggle.”
That was the price the PM had to pay for pro-independence parties voting sí to his budget. And it’ll likely cost him dearly at the ballot box.
If, as expected, the PP and Vox together win a majority of seats in parliament, their leaders will be strange bedfellows in a coalition government. In contrast to the gender-fluid and easily offended perroflautas (which loosely translates as "hippies") of Podemos, Vox leader Santiago Abascal styles himself as the classic macho ibérico: a tough-talking alpha male who loves bullfighting and hunting as much as he hates COVID vaccines and city bike lanes.
Yet Abascal is also the polar opposite of his likely future partner, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a bookish former tax inspector whose calm demeanor seems out of the place in the maelstrom of Spanish political fights. Indeed, the two are so different that Sánchez failed to convincingly merge them into a single political bogeyman during his only campaign debate with Feijóo.
One thing that Feijóo and Abascal can agree now on is that, together, they can beat Sánchez. They can figure out how to govern later.
Spain's opposition People's Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo listens to PM Pedro Sanchez speak during a session at the Senate in Madrid.
Spain votes local but thinks national
On Sunday, municipalities and regions accounting for about half of Spain’s population will hold elections that will reverberate on the national stage.
That’s because the votes are seen as a dry run for this December’s general election. Nationwide polls currently show the ruling left-wing PSOE lagging behind the conservative People’s Party. And since neither is expected to win outright, the support of smaller parties will be essential to form a government. The PSOE will look to progressive and separatist forces, while the PP will rely on support from the far-right Vox Party.
With the economy in the doldrums and the general election on his mind, PM Pedro Sánchez is already campaigning hard ahead of Sunday’s vote. He’s been doling out populist favorites, such as 2-euro movie tickets for seniors, normally seen only before national contests. Meanwhile, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijoó has been warning voters that Sánchez is not only killing the economy but that he’s also willing to cut deals with just about anyone to stay in power — including a far-left Basque secessionist party whose candidates convicted former terrorists.
Although this is not a national election, what everyone will be keeping an eye on is the overall vote count. If the conservative bloc gets a wide margin, it’ll give the Spanish right a lot of initial momentum ahead of the general election in December.