Spain has new president: PSOE's Pedro Sánchez ousts Rajoy
Friday, June 1, 2018 @ 7:18 PM
SOCIALIST leader Pedro Sánchez is now president of Spain after a no-confidence vote against the PP's Mariano Rajoy prospered with 180 votes – four more than the 176 majority needed to pass the motion.
Sánchez is now preparing to move into the Moncloa Palace, the official presidential residence, after receiving votes in favour from Unidos Podemos, two Catalunya regional parties ERC and PDeCAT, Basque parties PNV and EH Bildu, and the sole MP from Nueva Canaria, Pedro Quevedo.
Canarian Coalition's lone MP Ana Oramas abstained, and Spain's fourth-largest political party, the centre-right Ciudadanos, voted against as they believe the motion to be undemocratic and a snap general election should be called instead.
But Pedro Sánchez, a 46-year-old economics graduate and keen basketball player from Madrid, is going to have a tough challenge on his hands: his party, the second-largest in Parliament, only holds 84 seats out of the total of 350, and his new job comes right in the middle of the Catalunya separatist crisis which led to the right-wing PP government stripping the region of its self-ruling powers and to several politicians being jailed or forced into exile.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com