By Jorge Liboreiro
In the end, the bellwether didn’t come forth to lead the flock.
For the past two weeks, Europe’s anxious eyes have been on Spain, as the country plunged into an extraordinarily acrimonious and hostile campaign ahead of a snap general election. Given its economic weight and population size, Spain was supposed to provide a credible indication of the political winds ahead of the 2024 race to the European Parliament. Will the bloc take a hard turn to the right? Will the left be able to withstand? Will the extremes grow stronger?
Alas, the answers must wait.
In one of the biggest surprises in Spanish history, voters delivered a shockingly close result that left pollsters embarrassed, journalists ecstatic and politicians visibly stone-faced.
The conservative Partido Popular (PP) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the presumed favourite, fell woefully short of expectations, capturing 135 seats of the Chamber of Deputies, while the socialist party (PSOE) of incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez earned a better-than-expected tally of 122 seats, a modest improvement from the previous election.
The tight margin left the two parties with serious difficulties to reach the 176-seat threshold required to secure an absolute majority. While Sánchez has a slim chance of rebuilding its left-wing coalition with the backing of regional parties, whose demands are set to be pricey, Feijóo, the nominal winner, virtually lacks a mathematical path to a successful investiture.
Although he never explicitly said so, Feijóo’s plans for conquering power relied heavily on the far-right Vox, whom analysts had predicted to serve as a junior governing partner or, at least, to provide confidence and supply. But Vox, a formation that has relentlessly attacked the LGBTQ+ movement, questioned gender-based violence and embraced climate scepticism, flopped hard, falling from 52 to 33 seats and shedding more than 600,000 votes.
This debacle is perhaps the only clear-cut conclusion we can draw from the Spanish election: for the first time in over a year, a far-right-party in Europe has been stopped on its tracks, reversing a trend that began with the victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy and continued with electoral gains in both Sweden and Finland, coupled with growing support in Austria and Germany.
The current had become so pronounced that the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the European Parliament, had begun flirting with the possibility of striking an official alliance with the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) for the 2024 elections, which would have plunged the bloc deeper into conservatism.
Spain, however, shows the dangers the untested idea carries.
As voters perceived the far right coming closer and closer to the central government, they mobilised in favour of progressive parties, something that Sánchez himself had anticipated. Spain, it must be noted, is a country that was under a military dictatorship until 1975 so fears of a far-right takeover resonate more loudly there than in other parts of Europe. “The backward-looking, reactionary coalition that advocated a total derogation of the social progress we made in the last four years has failed,” Sánchez said.
But the victory is hard-fought – and evidently precarious.
If Sánchez eventually manages to secure the necessary support to keep Feijóo and Abascal away from power, he will do so on top of an unsteady, volatile association of left-wing, regional and independentist parties. As things stand now, Carles Puidgemont, the Catalan leader who is still wanted by the Spanish justice, is poised to play king-maker and cast the decisive vote in favour, a steep price that Sánchez might have no choice but to begrudgingly pay.
Still, this is all a guessing game for the time being. The final tally, which could still change after the expat votes are counted on Friday, are too inconclusive to know exactly where Spain is going and where Europe might end up along the way.
Editor’s note: The Briefing is taking a much-deserved break in August and will be back with more news in the first week of September. We wish you very pleasant holidays. See you soon!
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A CONTINENT UP IN FLAMES