SOCIALIST leader Pedro Sánchez's first attempt to become president has failed with all bar his own and centre-liberals Ciudadanos' MPs voting in favour.
Left-wing independents Podemos, Compromís and United Left, along with all the pro-independence regional parties and the acting right-wing PP government voted 'no'.
This means out of 352 MPs, the PSOE head was way off the majority of 176 votes needed to get him into power.
Ciudadanos has 40 seats and the PSOE 90, but their combined 130 was no match for the PP's 123, Podemos' 65 and the combination of smaller outfits such as United Left with two, Compromís with four, Basque nationalist parties EH and PNV with two and six respectively, or Catalunya's pro-secession parties DiL and ERC with eight and nine.
Only the Canarian Coalition, with just one MP, abstained, but this did not help Sánchez much with 219 votes against him.
Sánchez's downfall appears to be the deal he struck with Ciudadanos, which immediately lost him the vital support of Spain's third-largest political power, Podemos.
The programme includes scrapping temporary job contracts and amalgamating the numerous types of these in circulation into just three – a permanent one, a 'training' one, and a 'stable' one with redundancy pay gradually rising according to the length of time the employee has worked for the company and becoming permanent after not more than three years.
They agreed there would be no funding cuts in social welfare, education or health, that income tax would not go up except for the very wealthy, and to scrap the provincial councils or Diputaciones, as well as the Senate, but to create a 'territorial senate' to become the voice of different towns and regions.
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