Elections in Spain: squaring the circle

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When Angela Merkel agreed with Gerhard Schroeder on the “grand coalition” government, she did so so as not to have to co-govern with the far-right AFD (Alternative for Germany). In the following terms, there was also a partnership between Merkel’s Christian Democrat conservatives and the Social Democrats, later led by Martin Schulz and Olaf Scholz.

The two large centrist parties understood the priority of defending German democracy from the danger implied by the irruption of a neo-Nazi party and Die Linke, a Marxist party.

The antecedent of a grand coalition is the government shared by the conservative Kurt Kiessinger and the social democrat Willy Brandt in the 1960s, to jointly tackle economic measures that were both necessary and unpopular.

When necessity is law

When it comes to exceptional situations that imply risks for democracy or for the country and society, the British also had shared governments. David Lloyd George co-ruled during World War I, an experience that was repeated in the 1930s to deal with the Great Depression, and during World War II, when Winston Churchill summoned Labor Clement Attlee to be his deputy prime minister.

“What will our policy be? Wage war by land, sea and air…Wage war against that monstrous tyrant, pitiful catalog of human crimes,” Churchill said as he introduced his government in partnership with the Labor Party to the House of Commons. It was the speech that included the request for “blood, sweat and tears”, precisely to confront Nazi Germany.

When the danger to the British came from pressure from the Independent Party led by Nigel Farage and Eurosceptics from his own party, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron co-ruled with the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), led by Nick Clegg, although his attempt ultimately failed. to avert Brexit.

The impossible government

The leaders of the Spanish center-right and center-left should also prioritize the need to save the center, which is the best safeguard for democracy and the Constitution.

If they did, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Pedro Sánchez would try to form the government that Spain has never had: a grand coalition between the PP and the PSOE.

Núñez Feijóo winked at the traditional adversary of the PP, but only when he understood that his victory in the presidential election is a squaring of a circle.

The first thing he tried was to unite the water and the oil, something that, by the way, did not work. Although he did not publicly confess it, Núñez Feijóo was willing to co-govern with Vox in exchange for the votes of Santiago Abascal’s party for his investiture. But since that far-right force collapsed at the polls, losing 19 seats, his parliamentary support is not enough.

So, the PP tried to add regional parties close to the center, such as the PNV and the Canary Islands Coalition, and found what was to be expected: no regional party would support a government that includes Vox, because this is the heir to Falangism, an ideology ultranationalist promoted by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who promoted the Castilian centralism that characterized the Franco dictatorship.

For a Basque party, like the PNV, supporting the investiture of a government in which Vox is part resonates in historical memory like agreeing with the heirs of those who ordered the bombing of Guernica. And parties like the Canarian Coalition would not promote a government that puts the autonomies at risk.

The PP won the election, but to form a government, the support of Vox and other parties that would never mix with that ultra-conservative force is essential.

Pedro Sánchez’s dilemma

However, achieving the investiture would have a high political and moral price for Pedro Sánchez. First of all, for breaking the tradition of Spanish democracy: the government must be headed by the party with the most votes, even if it later has to deal with adverse parliaments.

With this rule, which is not a law, Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González, José María Aznar, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Mariano Rajoy and Sánchez himself came to power. But the current leader of the Psoe is tempted with a sum of few scruples: negotiate the support of Esquerra Republicana, which will ask him in exchange for a referendum for Catalonia, and Junts Per Cat, which will ask Carles Puigdemont for pardon, in addition to support controversial as that of Bildu, a descendant of Herri Batasuna, ETA’s former political arm, and that of the Galician Nationalist Coalition, which proposes removing Galicia from the Spanish kingdom.

It is one thing to add that support for the approval of laws and another is to add them to achieve an investiture.

It is possible that the Psoe will crack if Sánchez subjects it to such tensions. But the current president also seems more willing to save his power with dark pacts rather than agree to what Spanish democracy is asking for to save the center from the ideological sidelines that represent the extreme right and the separatist parties.

* Journalist and political scientist