Spain returns to the polls for the second time in six months on Sunday in an attempt to resolve the political stalemate that has beset the country since last December’s inconclusive general election.
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| Podemos supporters at a rally in Vitoria. |
Although there is increasing public frustration over the deadlock, polls suggest the new elections are likely to yield a similar result to last time, with no single party winning enough votes to form a majority government.
It also remains to be seen how profoundly Sunday’s poll - the first major European election since the UK voted to leave the EU - will be affected by Brexit, and whether Spaniards will seek reassurance by backing the conservative People’s Party (PP), or opt for a new alternative.
“It is really important to convey a message of institutional and economic stability,” said acting prime minister and PP head Mariano Rajoy in a televised address after Britain voted to leave. “It is not the moment to fuel or increase uncertainty.”
In December the PP gained the most votes but fell short of the 176 seats required to secure a majority in Spain’s 350-seat congress of deputies.
The socialist PSOE came second, followed by the leftwing, anti-austerity party Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos, or Citizens, party.
The votes attracted by the latter two parties – newcomers to a political scene that has been dominated for decades by the conservatives and the socialists – revealed a profound shift among an electorate that has been buffeted by Spain’s economic crisis and angered by a series of corruption scandals that have engulfed the PP in recent years.
Polls suggest Podemos’s decision to forge an alliance with the United Left (IU) coalition, whose members include the Communist party of Spain, could lift it above the PSOE into second place. This so-called sorpasso, or overtaking, could give Unidos Podemos a decisive role in shaping the next government.
A poll published late on Saturday night in the Andorra-based paper Periòdic d’Andorra, which is not affected by Spain’s ban on publishing surveys in the five days before the vote, showed the PP ahead on 28.7% of the vote (116-120 seats), and the PSOE and Unidos Podemos almost neck-and-neck with 21.6% (83-87 seats) and 23.9% (83-87 seats) respectively. It suggests that a coalition between the two left parties could yield 174 seats - tantalisingly close to a majority.
Sunday’s vote has been overshadowed not only by Brexit, but also by the latest PP scandal. Leaked conversations recorded between Jorge Fernández Diaz and the head of Catalonia’s anti-fraud office, Daniel de Alfonso, appear to show the two discussing investigations that could be launched against pro-independence Catalan politicians.
Amid the continuing uncertainty – and despite predictions that the economy will grow by 2.6% this year – the mood in Spain is more one of weary fatalism than freshly minted optimism.
Antonio Barroso, an analyst at the political risk advisory firm Teneo Intelligence, said Sunday’s result would probably carry a strong whiff of déjà vu.
“I think what we’re going to have on Sunday is essentially another highly fragmented parliament with a PP victory,” he said. “Basically, if the polls crystallise on Sunday, we will see a very similar picture to what we saw after the December election – but with two of the main characters swapping their roles.”
Barroso played down suggestions that the prospect of further weeks or months of negotiations would send the parties scurrying to form coalitions.
“Rajoy [has said]: ‘This is a shame, the rest of the country will be laughing at us.’ But the reality is that public opinion doesn’t matter because, at the end of the day, parties are political actors with very entrenched interests.”
The divisions that have stymied attempts at coalition-building over the past six months remain strong. Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the PSOE, has ruled out supporting either a PP-led government under Rajoy or a government led by Pablo Iglesias of Podemos. Sánchez’s attempts to put together a coalition with Albert Rivera of Ciudadanos were thwarted in March after Podemos and the PP declined to support the move.
Alberto Delclaux, a journalist for the Basque newspaper El Correo, said Spain had grown increasingly frustrated and polarised.
“The concerns are the same this time and there’s a bit of despondency because it looks as though, even though we’ve had the sorpasso, the results are going to be very similar when it comes to being able to govern,” he said.
“There’s also frustration because the four candidates weren’t able to form a government and none of them was willing to step aside. They don’t seem ready to change anything.”
Pau Marí-Klose, a professor of sociology at the University of Zaragoza, characterised the prevailing feeling as one of resignation rather than anger or exhaustion.
“The electorate has stuck firmly to its preferences over these past months,” he said. “You don’t see big changes in the polls. PP and Unidos Podemos voters have shown themselves very loyal to their December options; PSOE and Ciudadanos voters a little less so, but you can’t rule out the possibility that a lot of them will go and vote for their parties at the last minute. And that’s why the results and the turnout rate could be so similar to the last election.”
What had changed, though, said Marí-Klose, was the focus of the debate – something that bodes ill for future negotiations. Over recent months, he said, debates on policy issues – such as how to help vulnerable people affected by the economic crisis – had been overshadowed by bickering.
“The parties have switched to pointing out the defects of their rivals: Ciudadanos and the PSOE have waged a fairly hard campaign against Podemos, and Unidos Podemos have been presenting themselves as the real alternative to the PP, denying the PSOE its traditional role as the main challenger to the PP.”
He added: “It’s almost as if the parties decided that all their policy proposals were so well known that they didn’t need to bang on about them any more and so they devoted themselves to politicking instead.”
guardian
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