The president of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, and his conservative rival, Alberto Núñez FeijóoHe took the first steps on Monday to solve the puzzle of the formation of a government, after the elections on Sunday did not give him any easy chance.
The fourth European economy seemed headed for a political blockade after on Sunday, defying all the polls that predicted his debacle, Sánchez would modify the advance of the right-wing opposition. Both possible candidates will arrive at their parties on Monday to discuss strategies and alliances.
Feijóo’s Popular Party (PP) was the winner with 136 seats out of a total of 350 in the Congress of Deputies, while Vox, his only potential ally, got 33. However, between the two they only have 169 seats, far from the absolute majority of 176 that allows the formation of a government.
On the other side, Sánchez’s ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) won 122 seats and his ally Sumar 31, but both are in a better position to win support from Basque and Catalan regionalist parties.
“I have started the contacts taking into account that Spain has decided that there is no absolute majority of a single party, but also taking into account that it has not decided that there are impossible formulas that guarantee the investiture” of a government, Feijóo told his leaders gathered in Madrid.
For Sánchez, the main stumbling block will be getting at least one abstention from Junts per Catalunya, the party of Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont, refugee in Belgium after the secessionist attempt of 2017 and on whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested again this Monday that a search and capture order be issued, he has already announced that he will not give away anything.
Sumar, led by the Vice President and also Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz Pérez, announced on Monday that it had already commissioned one of its former leaders in Catalonia to negotiate with Junts to “explore all ways to start an agreement”, although a leader of this Catalan party, Jordi Turull, said that he did not see “the investiture (of Sánchez) anywhere right now”. This gave the PP arguments to claim that its leader is allowed to form a government: “The alternative to Feijóo is for Puigdemont to rule the government of Spain,” said Juanma Moreno, president of the Andalusia region.
The former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont (d.) and the former Catalan Health Minister Antoni Comin (l.).
an uncertain outlook
The result of the elections “will mark the beginning of a period of political uncertainty that will last for months”warn Federico Santi, an expert from the Eurasia Group, which agrees with the analysis of Spanish newspapers, which predicted, as in the case of El País, that a new government is “up in the air”.
On Sunday night, in front of his followers gathered at the PP headquarters in Madrid, Feijóo claimed his right to form a government as the “candidate of the party with the most votes.”
Without an absolute majority with Vox, Feijóo wants to govern in minorities, but for that he would need the abstention of the Socialists during the investiture election in Parliament, something that the PSOE has already said that it will not do. Feijóo, winner of the general elections in Spain, began a round of contacts with different parties to try to gain support that will make it easier for him to form a government.
In a speech before the National Board of Directors of his party, Feijóo announced that he has already contacted the far-right party Vox (33 deputies), with the Basque nationalists, PNV (5), and the Navarrese, UPN (1), and will do so with the regionalists of the Canary Islands (1). In order to govern, he needs to achieve an absolute majority of 176 deputies.
The conservative leader outlined three scenarios before his own: let the most voted rule, the blockade or that “all those who have lost explored an alternative majority with the explicit or tacit support of populist and pro-independence parties.”
The leaders of the PP closed ranks in public with their leader, despite the fact that in private they doubt the possibility of building a majority that will lead to the government of Spain, which would lead to an electoral repetition or to a new government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez supported by the pro-independence forces.
For his part, Sánchez could gather a total of 172 deputies, more than the conservative leader, so if Junts per Catalunya abstains, he could achieve the investiture in a second vote in Congress, where he only needs to have more yeses.
Otherwise, Spain, which already experienced electoral repetitions after blockades in 2015 and 2019, would be condemned to return to the polls in the coming months, just at a time when the country holds, from July to December, the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Sánchez himself assured that he does not contemplate the blockade and the repetition of elections. “Spain is a parliamentary democracy with its deadlines and procedures. This democracy will find the formula for governability”, said the president.
It arouses great interest abroad due to the possibility that a coalition of the right-wing party PP and Vox, of Francoist ideology and that defends an agenda that violates various civil rights, comes to power in a country considered a pioneer in the rights of women or of the LGBTIQ collective election +.
President Gustavo Petro, who is close to the left bloc, referred to the results in a brief message on his Twitter account where he said: “Good for Spain. Progressivism resists”, while his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, congratulated Spain for “not falling into the right-wing trap”.
For its part, the United States said that it will work periodically with “any government” that is formed in Spain because it considers that country an “indispensable ally, partner and friend.” King Felipe VI announced that he will begin a round of consultations with the parties to form a government after August 17.
STEPHANY ECHAVARRIA
INTERNATIONAL EDITOR
TIME
