The ruling conservative Popular party bash came 1st with 123 seats in Sun.’s election still fell far short of a 176 majority needed to govern alone & method below the 186 seats it won in 2011.
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The PP and the Socialists had alternated running the government for more than three decades, and all the parties must now embark on negotiations to form a coalition.
Spain’s leading opposition Socialist party Monday said it would vote against acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s candidacy to form a new government, thus killing one of Rajoy’s options to stay in power after voters elected a fragmented Parliament.
The Socialists shared 22 percent votes to 90 seats, while Podemos won 69 seats and shared 20.6 percent of votes.
Aside from the largest socialist party, who came second, that could mean dealing with Podemos, the movement born out of austerity and street protests.
While Rajoy’s People’s Party placed first in Sunday’s election, earning the right to try to form government, the results suggest the only party able to form a majority with him in the 350-member parliament would be historic rivals, the Socialists.
Rajoy recognized his party had taken “some hard and even unpopular decisions” over the past four years.
But Senior Socialist official Cesar Luena repeated the party’s position on Monday that it would reject a new government led by Rajoy, as did Iglesias.
If no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote, new elections have to be held.
The results showed two-party politics in Spain had ended, Podemos spokesman Inigo Errejon said.
Spanish stoicism has been impressive, but while ordinary Spaniards suffered, the established parties looked after their own through corruption.
Political science professor Pablo Iglesias, a ponytailed 37-year-old, and his radical left Podemos party want to break the mold of Spanish politics.
“We could work with the Socialists as long as they respect that democracy must be reformed, that the constitution and administration must be reformed”.
“Spain has inaugurated a new political era in our country”.
It is thought the PP will struggle to form a coalition, as entering into a deal with Ciudadanos – its closest political match – would still not give it enough seats.
However Rajoy admits coalition talks will not be easy, requiring lots of conversation and the hammering out of agreements among parties. 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.
Sunday’s results confirmed the demise of Spain’s two-party system.
The result shattered Spain’s traditionally bipartisan political system, reflecting disillusion with the mainstream PP and Socialists after years of economic crisis and austerity.
Miguel Redondo, a 19-year-old Madrid university student, voted for Podemos because “it’s the party that best understands the difficulties that young people are going through” in a nation where joblessness for people under 25 is more than double the country’s overall 21 percent unemployment rate.
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Such coalitions were fairly common in the mid-1990s, but given the current tensions between Madrid and the regional government in the former of those two regions, in particular, that may well be completetely untenable now. However, Spain continues to have the second-highest unemployment rate in the European Union.
