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Friday March 29, 2024

Socialists win in Spanish election; far-right party gains seats

By AFP
April 30, 2019

MADRID: Spain’s center-left Socialist party, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, was victorious in Sunday’s general election. The party took 29% of the vote, winning 123 seats in the 350-seat Congress of Deputies.

“We made it happen,” Sánchez told supporters in Madrid. “We’ve sent out the message that we don’t want to regress or reverse. We want a country that looks forward and advances.”But in order to advance, the Socialists will have to work with smaller parties to reach the 176 seats required to form a coalition government. It’s unclear what such a coalition might look like; even if it partnered with the far-left United We Can party, which won 42 seats, that left-wing alliance wouldn’t have enough seats to control the government.

The main opposition party, the conservative People’s Party, fared poorly. It won only 66 seats — 17% of the vote — less than half the number of seats it secured during the last election in 2016. According to the New York Times, it was the worst performance in its history.

“I don’t think it’s possible to exaggerate the scale of this debacle,” Cristina Ares, a professor of politics at the University of Santiago de Compostela, said.Financial markets were however concerned about a new period of instability in Spain, and the country’s benchmark share index was the worst performer among leading European indices.

The Socialists came first in Sunday’s snap poll, winning 123 seats out of 350, or close to 29 percent of the vote -- short of an absolute majority but an improvement on the 85 seats they secured in the last election in 2016.

Their nearest rivals, the main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), bagged just 66 seats compared to 137 in 2016, its worst showing in over two decades. Conservative votes were split among two other parties, the centre-right Ciudadanos and ultra-nationalist Vox, which won just over 10 percent of the vote in a country that has had no far-right party to speak of since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

The three rightist parties together have 147 seats, far from the 176-seat majority needed to govern.

The election was much commented in Europe, where the rise of far-right and/or populist movements has caused concern. "The predominance of progressive forces in Spain and the collapse of the right-wing PP is a message of hope," Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tweeted.

"Let’s not rush into predicting the dominance of the right in Europe." Italy’s hardline Interior Minister Mateo Salvini thought otherwise, noting Vox had gone from "0 to 24 seats," and congratulating its leader Santiago Abascal, as did French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Sanchez, who has never been elected before, coming to power in June after ousting PP prime minister Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote, has several options to govern. He could try to rule on his own as he did during the 10 months that he was in power with the backing of far-left Podemos and smaller regional groupings.

"We will try," Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo promised on Monday. The Socialists could even try to forego the support of Catalan separatists, now that it has more seats than before.