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At 21 on Sunday in Spain the polls for the political elections began. The counting of votes is not finished yet and for the moment the Socialist Party (PSOE) of the socialist Pedro Sánchez, head of government since 2018, and the Popular Party (PP), the historic Spanish center-right party, led by Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, are very close.
🇪🇸 Elections in #Spain – data from the Ministry of the Interior (59.5% scrutinized)
PP 131 seats
PSOE 128
Vox 33
Summer 30
28 morePP+Voice 164
PSOE+Add 158Absolute majority: 176 out of 350 pic.twitter.com/XlTrik2SLq
— YouTrend (@you_trend) July 23, 2023
In Spain, the vote was taken to renew the two chambers of parliament: the Congress of Deputies, i.e. the lower house, and the Senate, the upper house. Congress in turn will then appoint a new government. The results to keep an eye on are those of the Congress of Deputies, ie the lower house, which is elected with an almost perfectly proportional system. The Senate, on the other hand, is elected with a majority system on a regional basis, and above all it does not vote confidence in the head of government. Congress has 350 seats, and this means that 176 are needed to obtain an absolute majority.
There are two main deployments. The centre-left is made up of Sánchez’s PSOE, the historical political force of the Spanish left, and of Sumar, a new, more radical left coalition created a few months ago by Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz, which brings together all the forces to the left of the PSOE (Podemos, Más País, En Comú Podem and Compromís, and others). The PSOE and Sumar are not in coalition and present themselves as two distinct parties, but they have obvious links.
The right-wing lineup, on the other hand, is made up of the PP, a historic force of the Spanish centre-right, and Vox, a very radical far-right party. The PP and Vox also run for election as two distinct parties, but unlike what happens on the left, the links between the two formations are by no means obvious. Much of the PP leadership and electorate view Vox with some unease, and see the probable need to ally with the far right to form a government as a lesser evil and a painful compromise to take to disempower the left.
The so-called regional parties, i.e. the smallest parties present in the Spanish parliament which usually represent local bodies, will probably be decisive for achieving a majority. The most important are the two Catalan independence parties ERC (left, with 13 deputies in the current Congress) and PDeCAT (right, 4 deputies) together with the two Basque nationalist parties Bildu (left, 5 deputies) and PNV (right, 6 deputies). To these are added a handful of even smaller parties, often composed of a single deputy, such as the party representing the Canary Islands.
In the legislature that is ending, most of these parties have provided their external support to Sánchez and his center-left government and have been fundamental for the legislature: the Sánchez government is a minority government, which has only been able to approve laws thanks to the vote of the regional parties.
The elections in Spain were called by Sánchez a few months before the end of the legislature (which should have ended at the end of the year), after a serious defeat suffered by his government in local elections in May.