MADRID (dpa-AFX) – According to projections, the conservative opposition People’s Party (PP) won the parliamentary elections in Spain on Sunday, but clearly missed the absolute majority. The previous head of government, Pedro Sánchez, came second with his socialist PSOE. It was completely unclear on election night whether PP election winner Alberto Núñez Feijóo would succeed in forming a government. The right-wing populist Vox, with which Feijóo has not ruled out cooperation, made it clear on election night that it wanted to be in government. You will not “give away” your own votes, warned Vox Secretary General Ignacio Garriga.
According to projections based on counting a good 83 percent of the votes, the PP can hope for 135 seats in parliament in Madrid. Although Vox suffered losses and only got 33 seats, paradoxically it is likely to increase its political influence significantly. Whether the two parties together would achieve the absolute majority of 176 seats was initially questionable on the evening of the election. The PSOE came in second with 123 seats. Its left-wing partner, the newly founded electoral alliance Sumar, came in fourth with 31 seats.
Should the PP and Vox miss an absolute majority, they would have to rely on the support or at least the toleration of smaller parties in the “Congreso de los Diputados”. This is unlikely given the opposition from other parties to the right-wing populists. As a result, the fourth largest economy in the EU, which currently holds the presidency of the Union, could face a long stalemate. A “bloqueo”, a political blockade of the kind that occurred twice in a row after the 2015 and 2019 elections and required a second round of voting in each case, did not seem impossible.
Like partner parties in Hungary and Poland, Vox has a very unique understanding of the rule of law. She is also Eurosceptic and calls for cashing in on prestige left-wing projects in the areas of social affairs, the protection of minorities and the environment, and for cracking down on separatists. There is no so-called firewall to the right in Spain, as there is in Germany against the AfD. In some regions, PP and Vox already rule together. A “grand coalition” is unthinkable in Spain. Sánchez does not even want to tolerate a PP minority government and therefore leaves him “no choice” but to talk to Vox, Feijóo emphasized several times.
On Sunday, parts of the Senate were re-elected in addition to the lower house “Congreso de los Diputados”. In Spain, however, the upper house plays no role in forming a government. The parliamentary elections were actually only planned for the end of the year. But Sánchez preferred it after the debacle of the left parties in the May 28 regional elections. The left-wing government repeatedly warned that a right-wing government would undo the social gains of recent years and set the country back decades. She went unheard./er/DP/men