Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez greets supporters outside the Socialist Workers’ Party headquarters in Madrid, July 23, 2023.
In the run-up to Sunday’s Spanish general election, pollsters and commentators almost universally predicted that the conservative Popular Party would form the next government, ousting the left coalition headed by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez; and worse, that the conservatives would govern with the neofascist Vox party.
This would bring the far right into government for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship and would halt the process of Spain’s coming to terms with the crimes of the Franco era, under the Law of Historical Memory, a process that the left government has led. Vox’s demands also included a reversal of recent laws guaranteeing LGBTQ rights.
But the election did not work out that way. The more that voters learned about Vox, they less they liked it. Vox lost 19 of its 52 seats in the Spanish parliament. The Socialists picked up two seats.
The Popular Party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, was advertised as a kind of center-right version of Joe Biden, undramatic but reassuring. But Sánchez, once again, proved the better politician, having called this snap election after the Socialists’ losses in several regional elections, and gambling correctly that Vox would prove to be its own worst enemy.
Sánchez has also benefited from having been a very effective leader. His anti-inflation measures cooled prices without creating a recession; Spain now has the EU’s lowest inflation rate, at just 1.6 percent. And his government’s COVID vaccination and paid furlough program was also effective and appreciated.
At this point, Spain has what the Brits call a hung parliament. It takes 176 votes to form a government in the 350-member Spanish parliament. The Socialists and their usual left coalition partners in Podemos and other radical parties have about 154 votes. The Popular Party plus Vox have 170 votes.
Seemingly, the arithmetic favors the right. But Sánchez, as prime minister, has several options. He could call another election, or he could work out a deal with the remaining parties, nearly all of which are Catalan or Basque separatists. Those parties would be more inclined to support the left than the right, either in a coalition or from outside the coalition but allowing Sánchez and the left to govern.
As political scientist Omar Encarnación wrote in The New York Review of Books, a week before the election, “Despite a well-earned reputation as disruptors and political spoilers, separatist parties have also made significant contributions to Spanish democracy. They introduced political freedoms during the interwar years, led the resistance to Franco’s authoritarian regime, and ensured the success of the transition to democracy in the 1970s. Less apparent, though just as important, is that in recent years they have emerged as bulwarks against the far right.”
In addition to having a flawed crystal ball, many commentators reviewing the results made the lazy error of describing Spain as narrowly divided between center left and center right. Pedro Sánchez is not center left. He is a socialist and an effective one.
