Today’s general election in Spain is particularly important for a number of reasons. First of all because they could lead to the end of the government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez, who has been in office since 2018 and has profoundly transformed the country. Secondly because, according to polls, there is a good chance that Sánchez will be replaced by a right-wing government in which, for the first time in the history of Spanish democracy, a far-right political force nostalgic for Franco’s dictatorship could enter the executive, or at least play a decisive role in its formation and work.
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In the elections, the Spanish men and women will vote 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 polls give the right-wing parties an advantage, but tell of a rather uncertain outcome: the number of undecided voters is still high, and there is the considerable possibility that neither of the two main factions will be able to obtain the majority. There is also the possibility that the centre-left will take the lead, but this would be far more surprising.
The elections were called by Sánchez a few months before the end of the legislature (which should have concluded at the end of the year), after a serious defeat suffered by his government in local elections in May.
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There are two main alignments: the centre-left is made up of the Socialist Party (PSOE), which is Sánchez’s party and which is the historical political force of the Spanish left, and by Sumar, a new more radical left coalition created a few months ago by Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz, with the aim of putting the many parties to the left of the PSOE under a single electoral cartel: after rather lengthy negotiations, this intention was successful and all the forces of the left such as Podemos, Podemos, Más País, En Comú Podem and Compromís.
Yolanda Díaz (Iván Delgado/Contact via ZUMA Press)
The PSOE and Sumar are not in coalition and present themselves as two distinct parties, but they have obvious links. The candidate for president of Sumar’s government is Yolanda Díaz, but everyone takes it for granted that, if there were the possibility of obtaining a center-left majority, Sumar would support Sánchez without too many problems, as is already happening in the current government, made up of the PSOE and Podemos.
The right-wing line-up is made up of the People’s Party (PP), which is the historical force of the Spanish centre-right, and of Vox, a very radical far-right party.
The leader and candidate of the PP is Alberto Nuñez Feijóo (pronounced Feihò, with the highly aspirated h typical of Spanish). Feijóo was the governor of Galicia, a region in northwest Spain, from 2009 to 2022, and is unanimously considered a moderate conservative, more interested in economic issues than in cultural battles. In the electoral campaign he has always been very careful to appear reassuring and common sense, and has said on a few occasions that one of his qualities is being “predictable”. On civil rights, despite having rather harsh conservative positions, he has tried to appear reasonable, and for example he said which does not intend to change the law that regulates access to abortion in Spain.
Alberto Nuñez Feijóo (Patricia Galiana/Contact via ZUMA Press)
The problem is that the PP’s main political ally could be Vox, a decidedly reactionary and nationalist far-right party, which is aligned with Europe’s authoritarian far-right (one of Vox’s role models is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán). Vox has very hard and obscurantist positions on a whole series of issues, it is openly anti-immigration, anti-feminist and Eurosceptic, and especially in past years its supporters have become protagonists of violent acts, for example against migrants. The leader of the party is Santiago Abascal, who has an excellent relationship with the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
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. This not at all easy relationship was evident in the local elections of recent years, when on more than one occasion the PP found itself deciding in a rather convulsive way whether to form a coalition with Vox or whether to accept external support from the party.
Santiago Abascal (Eduardo Parra/Contact via ZUMA Press)
In 2022, in the Castilla-León region the PP formed the first regional coalition government with Vox. The experience was repeated in May of this year in the elections in the region of Valencia: despite running with a candidate who in 2002 had been condemned for violence and persecution against his ex-wife, Vox obtained an excellent result, and after long negotiations he entered the government of the region together with the PP (the condemned candidate, however, was ousted at the request of the Popolari).
If the PP and Vox together obtain a majority in parliament, it is not yet clear how the negotiations will go.
However, the polls are still somewhat mixed. 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.
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Congress has 350 seats, and this means that 176 are needed to obtain an absolute majority. Among the most reliable polls at the moment are those of the newspaper The country (CIS, which is historically the most popular polling center in the country, has had some problems in recent years and the tendency to overestimate centre-left parties). According to Country, on the right, the PP could be the party with the most votes and obtain 142 seats; the PSOE 108 seats; Vox 35 seats and Sumar 34.
It would mean that, taking these estimates, the PP and Vox together would reach 177 seats and barely reach an absolute majority.
But we are talking about estimates that are currently extremely uncertain. According to the calculations of Country, the PP is given between a maximum of 164 and a minimum of 120 seats; the PSOE between 132 and 89 seats, and so on. So while the most likely option, there are still distinct chances that the right will fail to achieve an outright majority.
If he doesn’t make it, the so-called regional parties, i.e. the smallest parties present in the Spanish parliament that usually represent local bodies, will become important. 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. This has also brought many problems to Sánchez: during the electoral campaign of the past few weeks, the right attacked him above all for accepting Bildu’s support.
If the right does not obtain a majority in these elections, the regionalist parties could once again become fundamental, and help decide who will govern the country.
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