Nearly two weeks after an inconclusive general election, the governing conservatives' difficulty in forming a new administration means the pressure is building on a divided Socialist Party to resolve Spain's political limbo.
The Popular Party (PP) of Mariano Rajoy won the December 20th election, but its parliamentary majority was wiped out as two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, made an impact, coming in behind the second-placed Socialists.
With 123 seats in the 350-seat Congress, Rajoy has begun talks with other parties in an effort to form a governing partnership that can secure the majority needed for him to be sworn in as prime minister again in a first vote. If that is not possible, he would hope to persuade enough of his opponents to abstain in a second vote in order to govern in a minority.
“The most reasonable thing, which would reflect the will of the majority, would be to form a government with broad parliamentary support,” Rajoy said on Tuesday, reaching out to the liberal Ciudadanos and the Socialists to back him.
However, Ciudadanos is the only party which appears willing to help the PP govern, and its 40 seats would not form a majority. The Socialists, meanwhile, have reiterated their refusal to using their 90 seats – the party’s worst result since the Franco dictatorship – to help their traditional adversary.
“The Socialists’ NO is a NO to Rajoy and to the PP. We’ve made it clear,” tweeted the party’s spokesman, César Luena.
Left-leaning government
The most obvious alternative would be for the Socialists to attempt to form a left-leaning government. That would in theory include the anti-austerity Podemos, which has 69 seats, and either Ciudadanos or Basque and Catalan nationalists.
Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez has so far not ruled out such an option, arguing that on December 20th, Spaniards voted for change. However, Podemos's insistence on the staging of a referendum on independence in Catalonia seems to preclude it from working with any of the other three main parties.
Sánchez is therefore caught in a three-way dilemma: he can help the PP to govern, which would alienate many of his own voters; try to put together an unwieldy and unlikely leftist coalition; or simply allow the impasse to continue, in which case new elections would be held in the spring, in which his party would risk losing even more votes to a resurgent Podemos.
Many senior socialists are unhappy at Sánchez’s performance, especially after the poor election result. They are pushing for the party’s national congress to be held, as originally planned, in the next few weeks, with Andalusian leader Susana Díaz in a strong position to oust Sánchez.
Public rift
A damaging public rift has opened up in the party, with Sánchez attempting to delay the congress on the grounds that holding it as scheduled would compound the country’s broader political crisis.
Complicating Spain's deadlock is the fact that Catalan nationalists are planning to push ahead with secession as soon as they can agree on who should lead their independence project. If there is a consensus – current Catalan premier Artur Mas is the most likely candidate – then an escalating territorial crisis could prompt the Socialists to accept the PP's overtures and form an unprecedented cross-party partnership, based on opposing the separatist threat.
