2023-07-23 19:15:05
The announced shift to the right in Spain seems to have taken place: According to forecasts, the left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was voted out on Sunday. The conservative People’s Party PP led by opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo won the early parliamentary elections with 34.2 percent (145 to 150 seats) according to reports from the state TV broadcaster RTVE and other media. Together with the far-right Vox, an absolute majority in the 350-seat parliament was within reach.
According to RTVE, Sánchez’s Socialists (PSOE) finished second with 28.9 percent or 113-118 seats. Of course, the PP clearly missed out on the absolute majority of 176 seats, meaning that Feijóo would have to work with the right-wing populists from Vox to form a government. If an alliance between the PP and Vox actually comes about, it would be the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975 that a right-wing party would have direct influence on the government agenda.
According to different forecasts, with 24 to 31 seats, Vox was roughly on par with the left-wing electoral alliance Sumar (28 to 31), to which the previous governing party Unidas Podemos also belongs. Paradoxically, lead candidate Santiago Abascal’s controversial far-right party gets significantly fewer seats than it did in the last general election in 2019, when it got 52, but it will probably have much more political weight after this vote than last time. Vox wants to deport illegal immigrants and repeal laws on transgender rights, abortion and animal rights, among other things.
According to media forecasts, the PP and Vox have a good chance of achieving an absolute majority together. If that is not the case, they will have to rely on the support or at least the toleration of smaller parties in the “Congreso de los Diputados”. With that still uncertain, the EU’s fourth-largest economy, which currently holds the presidency of the Union, is sure to face weeks of negotiations. A “bloqueo”, a political blockade of the kind that happened twice in a row after the 2015 and 2019 elections and required a second round of voting in each case, cannot be ruled out.
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 election was actually scheduled 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. The warnings went unheeded.
The elections come at a tricky political time when Spain has just taken over the six-monthly rotating EU presidency. The European Union is currently working on a reform of the budget and debt rules. “Vox’s participation in government would mean a sharp shift to the right with serious consequences for Spain and Europe. However, that would not change the fact that the country is more divided than ever. That alone is not good news,” says German-Spanish historian Carlos Collado Seidel, who works as an adjunct professor at the University of Marburg.
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