Spain’s Socialists will need to cast net wide to form new government

Sunday’s general election in Spain has restored the Socialists’ status as the country’s primary political force, giving their leader Pedro Sánchez a strong chance of forming a new administration. However, it also confirms the fragmentation of Spanish politics, which is an obstacle to both stability and the resolution of the country’s Catalan crisis.

“The future has won, the past has lost,” Sánchez told jubilant supporters at the Socialist headquarters in Madrid, as the party secured 123 seats in the 350-seat Congress. That was a reference to his own party’s vision of a moderate, progressive Spain, which he contrasted with the conservative, often hardline, policies of his adversaries on the right.

However, the nature of that future is still somewhat hazy.

Vox now has a platform from which to deliver its hardline message and shape the political agenda on the right

Over the last 10 months, Sánchez has been governing in a minority. Despite the substantial gains his Socialists have made, they will have to cast a wide net in order to gain the support needed to form a new government. Podemos, to their left, are a natural ally.

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However, with only 42 seats, their parliamentary heft is limited. Also, while Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has expressed hopes of being part of a formal coalition and filling some ministerial posts, Sánchez might prefer to repeat their confidence-and-supply agreement of the last year.

Together, they are 11 seats short of an absolute majority. With the Ciudadanos party, which won 57 seats, insisting it will not help Sánchez govern, he will almost certainly have to look to smaller regional parties and either Catalan or Basque nationalists.

Belligerent language

However, the Spanish parliamentary system could come to the help of the Socialists: if a candidate trying to form a government falls short of an absolute majority in a first-round congressional vote, then he or she only requires a simple majority in the second round. In that case, the abstention of one of the pro-independence parties should be enough to ensure that Sánchez continues as prime minister.

While the Socialists’ victory was predictable, the scale of the collapse of the conservative Popular Party (PP) was less so. Pablo Casado, the 38-year-old who took control of the PP last summer, decided to drag it to the right, partly out of personal conviction and partly in a bid to stymie the threat of the far-right Vox.

His use of fierce, often belligerent language when attacking Sánchez and Catalan independence leaders soured the election campaign. Yet his strategy backfired spectacularly as the PP lost over half of its seats, suffering its worst-ever result as many of its more moderate voters migrated to Ciudadanos.

Others preferred the hard-right rhetoric of Vox, which has 24 seats. That is fewer than the party had hoped, but Vox’s arrival in the Spanish parliament is significant, destroying the long-held notion that memories of the Franco dictatorship had somehow inoculated the country against the far-right.

Vox, whose rise has been driven by an uncompromising stance on Catalonia and conservative social policies, does not have enough seats to influence law-making in any significant way. However, it now has a platform from which to deliver its hardline message and shape the political agenda on the right, especially in the wake of the PP’s debacle.

Vox’s success has not extended to Catalonia, where the right has struggled in this election. Instead, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) emerged as the leading party there, followed by the Socialists. Although ERC is a pro-independence force whose leader Oriol Junqueras is currently on trial for rebellion, it has moderated its stance in recent months, avoiding the more strident secessionism advocated by its rival Together for Catalonia (JxCat).

With the moderate unionism of the Socialists also making gains in the north-eastern region, this election result suggests that many Catalans are exhausted by the radicalism on on both sides of the debate.

While the era of two-party politics appears to be well and truly over in Spain, a new dynamic has emerged whereby the country is split down the middle into two polarised blocks. In such circumstances, political stability will be elusive, as will a swift solution to the Catalan conundrum.