General election campaign officially starts
Sunday, November 3, 2019 @ 12:27 PM
WHAT IS SET to be one of Spain's shortest-ever general election campaigns has officially got off the ground – and, as is always the case, the second the clock struck midnight on the last day of October, political parties were ready to go with their poster-sticking, since they are not allowed by law to do so until the campaign period begins.
Since the last, effectively, bipartite election campaign at the end of 2011, real contenders for leadership have been growing in number all the time – the right-wing PP and current reigning left-leaning PSOE (socialists) had stopped competing just against each other by the time of the 2015 vote; centre-right Ciudadanos and left-wing independents Podemos, running in coalition with United Left as Unidos Podemos, had burst onto the scene with the latter coming from nowhere to net five European Parliament seats in 2014.
The far right in the shape of Vox – which had been in the background for a long time but never achieved Parliamentary representation – appeared as a very real source of competition in the elections in April, which the PSOE's Pedro Sánchez had called to seek a mandate for governing after just 10 months in power following a no-confidence vote against the reigning PP due to widespread corruption charges against high-ranking members.
Now, the five has grown to six, with Podemos breakaway group Más País! ('More Country'), led by former member Íñigo Errejón expected to win at least a handful of seats with his pro-social policies that include a 32-hour working week instead of the current 40 hours and a minimum wage and State pension of €1,200 a month.
Styling themselves as more moderate left than Podemos but further left than the PSOE, the party's leader was in Cádiz this evening for his first-ever political rally as a presidential candidate.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com