Spain's Inconclusive Election
Spain’s latest parliamentary elections have proven to be a historical milestone in that country’s relatively young democratic history. For the first time in modern Spain, the dominance by the country’s two leading political parties (the center-right Popular Party and the center-left Socialists) has been broken, as two new parties have emerged to challenge their leadership. As a result, Spain is facing a period of major political uncertainty as the country’s political system undergoes a major change. Moreover, given the multitude of threats facing Spain at the moment, such a period of political uncertainty and instability poses a serious threat to the country.
As had been expected, Spain’s governing center-right Popular Party (PP) won the largest share of the vote in these parliamentary elections, as the PP won 28.7% of the vote and 123 of the 350 seats in the parliament. However, this represented a loss of 64 seats in the parliament, costing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the Popular Party their majority in the parliament. The center-left Socialists (PSOE) finished second in these elections with 22.0% of the vote and 90 seats in the parliament, but this too represented a significant loss for the party that has dominated the political left in Spain since democracy was restored in the wake of the Franco dictatorship.
Spain’s recent economic crisis and a series of corruption scandals were largely to blame for the loss of support for both the Popular Party and the Socialists. Instead, these economic woes and corruption scandals allowed two new political parties to emerge as major players in Spanish politics. One of these parties is Podemos, a far-left party that performed very well in regional and local elections a few months before Spain’s latest parliamentary elections. In these parliamentary elections, Podemos won 20.7% of the vote and 69 seats in the parliament, beating expectations. The other newcomer to the Spanish political scene is the centrist Ciudadanos (Citizens) party that benefitted from the loss of support for the Popular Party to win 13.9% of the vote and 40 seats in the parliament.
As a result of no single party winning more than 29% of the vote, there is no obvious coalition government that can be formed in the wake of these elections. The Popular Party had hoped to win enough of the vote to form a coalition government with the Ciudadanos party, but they would be 13 seats short of a majority in the parliament. Likewise, a Socialist-Podemos coalition would be 17 seats short of a majority, although some Socialist leaders are hopeful that they can reach some sort of deal with the Ciudadanos party. The only other option would be for the larger parties in the parliament to reach out to the regional parties that hold a number of seats in the parliament, including the left-wing Republican Left of Catalonia, the Catalan nationalist Democracy and Freedom party or the Basque Nationalist Party. Altogether, it is clear that forming a new government will be very difficult and this could result in a new election being called for early 2016.
For Spain, this political uncertainty comes at a very dangerous time. As we have already seen in Greece and Portugal, the rise of populist political movements has caused a great deal of political uncertainty that has harmed both countries’ recoveries from their recent economic crises. As Spain has staged the strongest recovery of the crisis-hit southern European economies, it is a major concern that this recovery may now be in jeopardy should political instability lead to declines in business, consumer and investment confidence in Spain. On the political front, Spain is in the midst of a major crisis centering on the popular independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque country, and a power vacuum in Madrid would bolster the drives for independence in both regions. As a result, it is in Spain’s interest to have a solid government in place as soon as possible, but this may prove impossible given the new balance of power in the Spanish parliament.