On Sunday evening Spain’s ruling Popular Party lost its parliamentary majority in elections meaning Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy may well be the third European leader to be ousted this year after pushing forward unpopular austerity policies.
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With 96 percent of the vote counted, the Popular Party was heading toward winning 121 seats in the 350-member lower house of Parliament – far fewer than the 186-seat majority it now holds.
Francisco Herrera, a 43-year-old porter in Madrid, said he was disappointed with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s leadership, but would vote for his Popular Party because it “defends the economy and the type of government that suits us right now”.
PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez, for his part, acknowledged the PPs victory and said that party should bear the responsibility of forming a new government. The PP and Ciudadanos would together command up to 168 seats, still short of a parliamentary majority.
According to one political expert, Spain’s election is seen as the most important one in southern Europe since the end of the eurozone crisis in late 2012 and that even if the left were to return to power, which is highly unlikely, the ECB’s asset purchase program would ensure that any post-election sell-off would be relatively mild.
Albert Rivera, leader of Ciudadanos, said his party made history by winning 40 seats in Parliament and becoming the axis of a new transition because it will serve as the depositary of the people of good faith who want Spain to once again be decent..
Rajoy said on Wednesday he would consider a cross-party pact to ensure a stable administration over the scheduled four-year term, but all the other main parties have come out against joining the PP in a coalition.
“A new Spain has been born”, Mr Iglesias said.
Spain has been dominated for more than three decades by the conservative Popular Party and the main opposition Socialists, who have alternated running the government. Voting was brisk with lines outside some polling stations and voter participation of 73.2 percent, up from 68.9 percent in the 2011 election. Podemos calls for the end of an elitist system while Ciudadanos is aiming to make Spain more competitive and more transparent.
The fact that the conservative PP came first with just 29% of the vote tells you how split this election was. “I will try to do that”.
Voters in Spain were casting their ballots on Sunday in what is expected to be one of the most closely-fought contests in modern history as two dynamic new parties take on the country’s long-established giants. Other parties favor negotiations to devolve more power to Catalonia.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis and a raft of corruption allegations against the establishment parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos emerged to challenge their hegemony, mirroring the disruption of traditional politics in many western democracies, from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the U.S. to Alexis Tsipras in Greece and France’s Marine Le Pen.
“For the first time, those of us who didn’t experience the first democratic transition are experiencing a second one”, Rivera said. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party gained 90 seats in the 350-seat Congress of Deputies.
Spain’s new far left Podemos party has eaten away support for the center-left Socialists.
The trajectory of Podemos underscores that all of the political parties represented in the legislature are fundamentally hostile to the interests of the working class and support austerity and war.
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“Spain has voted for a change of system”, Iglesias told supporters Sunday night.
