Almost a month after the elections at the end of July, on Tuesday the King of Spain gave the task of forming a government to the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo. It is a formal act envisaged by the Constitution, and does not imply that Feijóo will form a government, indeed at the moment this hypothesis appears very distant.
Feijóo’s appointment was obvious, given that the Popular Party is the one that obtained the most votes in the elections and has the largest number of seats. However, it is very unlikely that he will be able to find a majority that will support him and allow him to pass the vote of confidence in parliament: the right-wing coalition, also supported by the far-right party Vox, in fact counts on 172 seats, four fewer than those needed to have a majority.
Not even the left coalition, formed by the Socialist Party (PSOE), the radical left party Sumar and some small regional Basque and Catalan parties, has enough seats, but what happened a few days ago for the election of the president of the Chamber could affect also on the formation of a government coalition: in that case, in fact, the deputies of Junts per Catalunya (more simply called Junts), a Catalan center-right independence party, had also voted for the socialist candidate. Negotiations with Junts are still ongoing and it is by no means certain that they will ultimately support a left-wing government, but it is certain that with their support there would be the numbers for a majority in parliament.