Spaniards vote in historic election with new upstart parties

The outcomes, if confirmed, showed Spaniards voted to disrupt a two-party system in that has seen the PP & the Socialists alternate in power for the past 33 years of time of time.

Sunday’s results also pave the way for the Socialists to govern with the support of Podemos and several smaller parties, such as the Republican Left of Catalonia, which won nine seats, or Artur Mas’ Convergence party, which won eight seats. Led by Mariano Rajoy, the current prime minister, it earned 29% of the vote and won only two-thirds the number of seats it took in 2011. With candidates including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders challenging mainstream party lines in the USA, figures like radical anti-establishment Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau and his youthful optimism have swept aside conventional opponents.

He congratulated the ruling Popular Party for receiving more votes than any other party.

The uncertainty casts a pall over an economic reform program that has helped pull Spain – the fifth-largest economy in the European Union – out of recession and dented a still sky-high unemployment rate. “I will try to form a government, a stable government”, he told supporters gathered outside his party’s headquarters in Madrid yesterday.

A new era of pacts and possible instability has begun in Spain after the country’s general election redrew the political map in dramatic fashion.

“Austerity has also been defeated politically in Spain”, he said in a brief written statement.

But the question mark of the elections remains Podemos, whose pony-tailed, 37-year-old leader Pablo Iglesias is now a household name.

The polls cap a year of electoral change in southern Europe after Syriza was swept to power in Greece in January and a coalition of leftist parties in Portugal pooled their votes in parliament to unseat the conservative government after an inconclusive election in October.

However, today’s score is the PP’s worst result ever in a general election, according to Spanish media. The Socialists had 90 and the Podemos party had 69. The most likely ally for the Popular Party is Ciudadanos, while the Socialists would probably team up with Podemos.

However, PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez is committed to Spanish unity and has categorically ruled out a vote that could allow Catalonia to split with the rest of the country.

With two hours left before polls close, turnout for Spain’s national election was up slightly compared to the last time the country held one in 2011. “Spain has voted for the left”.

Sánchez said the election campaign saw “a coalition of interests trying to make the Socialist Workers Party disappear, but they haven’t succeeded”.