The Spanish general election of November 2019: Escucha las regiones!
The November 2019 Spanish general election, held after coalition talks led by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) failed to form a government, resulted in a sharper divide between left and right, similar to what is being seen in most other European countries.
It was the centrist Citizens' Party (Ciudadanos) who lost out the most in this election, and they had enough seats to become junior partners in a Pedro Sanchez and PSOE-led government after initial talks between PSOE and the more socialist United Left-Podemos coalition of Pablo Iglesias failed. The C's lost nearly 3/5 of their April 2019 vote and were reduced to just 10 seats, which came from just four major Spanish cities. It found its Spanish nationalist mantra usurped by the extreme nationalist Vox, who won as many as 52 seats and third place in the Spanish polls with 15.1% of the vote nationally. Furthermore, the events in Catalonia are strengthening support for regionalist parties across Spain, both inside and outside Catalonia. Vox's surge in support also came in part from more extreme PP supporters; the new leader of Partido Popular, Pablo Casado, is not as hardline nationalist as former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was, although the collapse of the C's did help the PP with winning seats; it gained an extra 22 although it is still considerably behind the PSOE; the PSOE won 120 seats to the PP's 88 this election.
United Left-Podemos suffered from the formation of a splinter group, Mas Pais (More Country) by one of its fomer co-leaders, Inigo Errejon, proving it to be a not very United Left after all. Its failure to make headway in coalition talks with PSOE was also a factor in it losing seats, losing a total of 7; by comparison PSOE lost just 3 seats and is still clearly the largest party in Spain. Mas Pais, in collaboration with the Spanish Green Party (Equo) won 2 of these seats, as it focused on larger constituencies where only the 3% threshold would have been an issue, especially since the closed-list system of proportional representation used all across Spain (except for Ceuta and Melilla where first past the post applies in practice since these two provinces elect only one deputy apiece) makes personal votes very difficult to utilise.
Regionalist parties made considerable gains in this election in light of unjust sentencing of former Catalonian leaders simply for organising a Catalonian independence referendum in 2017; ironically the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) was the only regional party to lose seats this election, mainly because of the rise of the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy, which gained two seats, the same number lost by ERC. Various regional parties made a net total gain of 5 seats between them, accounting for ERC's loss of two seats, with both Basque regionalist parties gaining a seat each, the Together for Catalonia coalition gaining a seat, the Galician nationalist bloc gaining a seat, and the Teruel Exists group gaining their first seat. This means regional parties will hold the true balance of power in the next Spanish parliament in the absence of a grand coalition between the PSOE and PP being a realistic possibility, and a relaxation of the concentration of power in Madrid will be essential in the short and the long term, not just in relation to Catalonia. In particular, regional parties identifying on the socialist and progressive side are faring far better than regional parties on the conservative side, with the exception of the Aragonese People's Union (who participated in the Sum Navarre coalition).
Every other minor non-regional party lost votes this Spanish election, even those with such little support to begin with, and all of the new parties failed to poll more than 0.01% apiece. For the third consecutive Spanish election, the minor ecologist party Union of Everyone (Union de Todos) received the wooden spoon, by polling just 31 votes, just 3 more than in April.
Despite a shift back towards conservatism in Spanish politics amongst those not voting for regionalist interests, it is clear that only a PSOE-led coalition is viable, and the support of United Left-Podemos alone will not be enough to make such a coalition stable. Between them, the regionalist parties now hold a total of 29 seats between them in the Congress of Deputies, and 25 of these seats are held specifically by regional parties with socialist and pro-regional independence/devolution sympathies. In the last four years, Spain has had as many as four parliamentary elections-and current Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez will need to make major concessions to the regions of Spain that are far from Madrid to avoid a third election within the space of one calendar year.
It was the centrist Citizens' Party (Ciudadanos) who lost out the most in this election, and they had enough seats to become junior partners in a Pedro Sanchez and PSOE-led government after initial talks between PSOE and the more socialist United Left-Podemos coalition of Pablo Iglesias failed. The C's lost nearly 3/5 of their April 2019 vote and were reduced to just 10 seats, which came from just four major Spanish cities. It found its Spanish nationalist mantra usurped by the extreme nationalist Vox, who won as many as 52 seats and third place in the Spanish polls with 15.1% of the vote nationally. Furthermore, the events in Catalonia are strengthening support for regionalist parties across Spain, both inside and outside Catalonia. Vox's surge in support also came in part from more extreme PP supporters; the new leader of Partido Popular, Pablo Casado, is not as hardline nationalist as former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was, although the collapse of the C's did help the PP with winning seats; it gained an extra 22 although it is still considerably behind the PSOE; the PSOE won 120 seats to the PP's 88 this election.
United Left-Podemos suffered from the formation of a splinter group, Mas Pais (More Country) by one of its fomer co-leaders, Inigo Errejon, proving it to be a not very United Left after all. Its failure to make headway in coalition talks with PSOE was also a factor in it losing seats, losing a total of 7; by comparison PSOE lost just 3 seats and is still clearly the largest party in Spain. Mas Pais, in collaboration with the Spanish Green Party (Equo) won 2 of these seats, as it focused on larger constituencies where only the 3% threshold would have been an issue, especially since the closed-list system of proportional representation used all across Spain (except for Ceuta and Melilla where first past the post applies in practice since these two provinces elect only one deputy apiece) makes personal votes very difficult to utilise.
Regionalist parties made considerable gains in this election in light of unjust sentencing of former Catalonian leaders simply for organising a Catalonian independence referendum in 2017; ironically the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) was the only regional party to lose seats this election, mainly because of the rise of the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy, which gained two seats, the same number lost by ERC. Various regional parties made a net total gain of 5 seats between them, accounting for ERC's loss of two seats, with both Basque regionalist parties gaining a seat each, the Together for Catalonia coalition gaining a seat, the Galician nationalist bloc gaining a seat, and the Teruel Exists group gaining their first seat. This means regional parties will hold the true balance of power in the next Spanish parliament in the absence of a grand coalition between the PSOE and PP being a realistic possibility, and a relaxation of the concentration of power in Madrid will be essential in the short and the long term, not just in relation to Catalonia. In particular, regional parties identifying on the socialist and progressive side are faring far better than regional parties on the conservative side, with the exception of the Aragonese People's Union (who participated in the Sum Navarre coalition).
Every other minor non-regional party lost votes this Spanish election, even those with such little support to begin with, and all of the new parties failed to poll more than 0.01% apiece. For the third consecutive Spanish election, the minor ecologist party Union of Everyone (Union de Todos) received the wooden spoon, by polling just 31 votes, just 3 more than in April.
Despite a shift back towards conservatism in Spanish politics amongst those not voting for regionalist interests, it is clear that only a PSOE-led coalition is viable, and the support of United Left-Podemos alone will not be enough to make such a coalition stable. Between them, the regionalist parties now hold a total of 29 seats between them in the Congress of Deputies, and 25 of these seats are held specifically by regional parties with socialist and pro-regional independence/devolution sympathies. In the last four years, Spain has had as many as four parliamentary elections-and current Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez will need to make major concessions to the regions of Spain that are far from Madrid to avoid a third election within the space of one calendar year.
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