Albert Nuñez Feijóo, leader of the Partido Popular (PP), the conservative People's Party, has failed to achieve an outright win in the snap General Election called in Spain and held yesterday, Sunday 23 July ).
Current prime minister Pedro Sánchez' gamble in calling an early election may have paid off. Although his PSOE party (socialist) failed to win the most seats, his party did not receive the drubbing indicated by the opinion polls.
Hung Parliament
PSOE gained 122 seats against the 136 of the PP, but potential coalition partners, the ultra-right wing VOX, dropped from 52 to 33 seats, meaning that a coalition of PP and VOX would not achieve the 176 required for a majority.
PSOE, together with the left-wing alliance SUMAR, which includes Podemos, make up 153. However, PSOE previously worked with smaller regional parties to achieve a majority, and that could happen again. What is clear is that we are in for weeks of negotiations and horse-trading before we know who will form the next Spanish government.
What went wrong?
Feijóo and PP were supposed to win a landslide victory, so what happened?
Feijóo committed some major blunders in the week before the vote.
First of all he had been left looking awkward after his claims about the PP’s track record on pensions turned out to be untrue.
He was then criticised for the sexist tone of an apparent reference to the make-up of Yolanda Diaz, leader of Sumar and deputy prime minister to Sánchez in the current government.
Then Feijóo pulled out of a scheduled TV debate, claiming a bad back.
Clearly, the electorate were not impressed.
With Sánchez proclaiming that the country had a stark choice between the forces of progress and the forces of reactionary conservatism, the electorate appears to have had a rethink. With PP under-achieving and VOX losing ground and seats, there is every chance that Sánchez may yet lead the next government.
What happens next?
If no viable government is formed within two months, there will be new elections.
Watch this space!
Acknowledgements:
Financial Times (photo of Pedro Sánchez)
The Guardian
El Mundo
Wikipedia (photo of Alberto Nuñez Feijóo)
© Pablo de Ronda
Tags:
El Mundo, Feijoo, Financial Times, general election, Guardian, Podemos, PP, PSOE, Sanchez, Sumar, VOX, Wikipedia