Your complete guide to today's elections: Who's voting for whom, and why
Sunday, November 10, 2019 @ 8:56 PM
BY TONIGHT, we will once again know which political party has won the most seats in the fourth general election in as many years – but we probably won't know who will be in government for the next four. The upsurge in independent parties – with four major contenders now on the scene who were either unheard of or did not exist in the 2011 elections, the last to end with a definitive result – general elections in Spain are no longer a straight contest between the 'Big Two', the left-wing socialists, or PSOE, and the right-wing Popular Party, or PP.
This is exactly what has led to hung Parliaments since the November 2015 election, which ended inconclusively and sparked a repeat in spring 2016.
After this, and to avoid taking Spain to the polls for a third time, PP leader Mariano Rajoy was reluctantly given licence to reign again by the opposition subject to numerous caveats; when these conditions came undone, a no-confidence vote by PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez in June 2018 put him into power, but with the smallest minority a national government has ever seen.
Such a small minority, in fact – just over a quarter of the available 350 seats in Parliament – that Sánchez was unable to gain enough support from the opposition for his budget, forcing him to call a general election in April this year to give him a mandate to rule effectively.
Sánchez's presence in Parliament dramatically increased, to 123 seats, but the inability of the left-wing parties to reach an agreement meant he did not have enough support from the opposition to get him back into power, resulting in a repeat election, taking place today (Sunday, November 10).
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com