Spain went to the polls in a snap election Sunday and the center-right party, PP, suspected it could ride a conservative wave into government, but only with the neo-fascist party, Vox, as a partner. They were probably right. The 350 seat lower House, the Congress of Deputies had a mishmash of 25 parties when the Cortes was dissolved on May 30 after the rightists came out ahead in local and regional elections. 7 of those parties had only 1 seats each and 5 had just 2 seats each. Pedro Sánchez, head of the center-left PSOE was prime minister, his party having won 28% of the vote and 108 seats, the most of any party. He put together a coalition government with the Podemos Group (4 left wing parties with 33 seats) and 3 left-wing Catalan parties (12 seats). The mainstream center party, PP, won 20.8% of the vote and had 88 seats and the fascist party, Vox, took 15.1% of the vote and had 52 seats. The various leftist parties running under the Sumar banner held 38 seats (after having won 15.3% of the vote).
Polling was awful for Sánchez and all but one July poll showed PP beating his party— and the one that showed him ahead was by a fraction of a point, far below the margin of error. Every polling aggregator showed PP winning. As the votes were counted yesterday, it became clear that no party was going to get anywhere near the 176 votes needed for a majority. That meant a coalition would have to be formed. With half the votes counted, it was incredibly close:
PP- 130 seats
Vox- 31 seats
Total 161 seats
PSOE- 120 seats
Sumar- 30 seats
Total- 161 seats
As more votes were counted, though, it because obvious that the right-wing parties were out-polling the left-wing parties, although still not enough to take a majority without help from some of the smaller parties. PP gained 47 seats to bring its total to 136, while PSOE gained 2 seats for 122, far better than had been predicted. Now comes the horse-trading to see which party will lead a coalition government. The fascist party, led by Santiago Abascal, the Ron DeSantis of Spain, dropped from 52 to 33 seats but is likely to hold a great deal of power in a PP-led government and will be able to extract a lot of extremist concessions from Feijóo if they can woo 7 seats from minor and regional parties. PSOE + Sumar (31 seats) will have 153 seats, so it's conceivable they could put together a coalition government with regional parties, although several of them are seeking independence, complicating any kind of deal. For example, the Catalan separatist party, Junts, will have 7 seats. They could swing the government to Sánchez or, by abstaining, force a new election. This process isn't going to fully play out in days or even weeks.
What’s at stake? The government has offended conservative by advancing LGBTQ rights, women’s choice and menstrual leave. Vox— a climate denying party— has promised to roll all of that back. Before yesterday’s vote, the Washington Post reported that a first-place finish for PP was likely that that would make the 61-year-old moderate conservative Alberto Núñez Feijóo prime minister. “Hailing from the same Spanish region— Galicia— as both Franco and Spain’s last conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, Feijóo has proudly described himself as ‘boring’ even as he outmaneuvered Sanchez in the debates and led conservatives to the threshold of power. Stoking Spanish nationalism, he has hammered Sanchez’s left-wing alliance for cooperating with regional parties in the Basque country and Catalonia that have agitated for independence. In the closing days of the race, Feijóo suffered setbacks. Fresh questions have emerged about his 30-year relationship with a convicted drug trafficker [money launderer Marcial Dorado], and a journalist called him out for patently false statements. On the campaign trail, his choice of words led to charges of sexism, and back problems forced him to pull out of the last debate. But he has sought to capitalize on voters who see Sánchez as a grandstanding self-promoter who pushed Spain to adopt laws the right portrays as radically leftist, including a transgender bill that allows people as young as 16 to legally change their gender on national IDs without medical supervision.”
Vox and the PP are co-ruling in several Spanish jurisdictions, including the important region of Valencia. But its entry into national government would be profoundly symbolic for Spain as well as Europe, where other right-led countries such as Italy and Poland have sought more aggressive stances against migrants and asylum seekers, and spoken of the need to balance efforts to fight climate change with economic realities.
At home, both Vox and the PP have sought a repeal of Spain’s Memory Law that unequivocally denounced the Franco regime and deployed state funds to help identify legions of still-unidentified victims buried in mass graves. In some local communities, Vox has stood accused of censorship, including defunding a gender-bending play by Virginia Woolf and canceling library subscriptions to Catalan-language magazines.
Some fear its rise to national government could influence cultural expression in Spain.
L’ETNO, the Valencian Museum Of Ethnology, for instance, is showing a stirring exhibition on the Franco years that simulates a mass grave and showcases the outfits of firing-squad victims.
“We need independence,” said Joan Ramon, the museum’s director. “If Vox or any other political party puts problems in the normal development of cultural activities, in any country, you have to start to be worried.”
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