Spain’s General Election Run Down
While most of our clients don’t live in Spain, they own property here, renting it out and paying taxes, so it’s important to stay up to date with the political situation. Spaniards went to the polls on the 28th of April after a snap election was called by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party). In this post, we will summarise what happened and how the political landscape has changed.
There was a very high turnout, of nearly 76% and PSOE won the election, with a 28.7% share of the votes. PSOE defines itself as “social democratic, centre-left and progressive”. Pedro Sánchez is leading the party and is the acting Prime minister. However despite the strong performance, the party has not done enough to get an absolute majority, therefore will need to make an alliance with more parties to form a governing coalition.
In the election, the Popular Party (PP) lost a huge number of seats, down from 137 to just 66 – their worst result in history. PP is center-right and led from the 2011 elections until 2018 when a corruption case brought down the government with a no confidence vote. Pablo Casado was named leader in July 2018, and the party swung further to the right, the dismal result in the current elections has brought his leadership into question.
Far right Vox secured 10.26% of the votes, lower than polls suggested, they enter congress, but will not play a decisive roll in the formation of a new government.
Cuidadanos is a centre right political party, opposed to Catalan nationalism. They improved their position significantly, up from 32 to 57 representatives, but have refused to go into coalition with PSOE. Left wing Unidas Podemos lost 29 seats in the election, but is looking to go into a governing coalition with the socialists.
Now the politicians are negotiating to form coalitions and the PSOE is the only party able to build a governing majority. However, they are also preparing for the local and regional elections on May 26th and aren’t in a rush to finalise their alliances until these elections are complete and the votes are counted. El Pais predicts a “long power struggle” and how the final political landscape will look remains to be seen. We will keep you updated.
Find out more on the El Pais in English website –
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/04/29/inenglish/1556519911_184823.html
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/04/30/inenglish/1556608489_985863.html
