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Spain buries two-party system, Catalans demand self-determination (again)
'Right to decide' parties win 60% of seats in Catalonia · Worst result for PP since 1989, PSOE since 1933 · Basque parties lose ground
Right-wing conservative Popular Party (PP) and two minor Navarrese and Asturian allies captured 123 seats, down from 186 in 2011. This is the worst result for Spanish president Mariano Rajoy’s party since 1989. It was also the worst result since the end of Francoist dictatorship for the Socialist Party (PSOE), which won 89 seats, 21 less than 4 years ago. In fact, only in 1933 (59 seats) PSOE had won less seats than today.
Centre-left Podemos emerged as the third largest party. Pablo Iglesias's party captured 42 seats, and three Podemos-linked alliances in Catalonia (En Comú Podem), the Valencian Country (És El Moment) and Galicia (En Marea) captured won another 27 seats, which brings their combined number of seats to 69.
Centre-right, liberal Citizens Party (C’s) also made it for its first time ever to the Spanish Congress by securing 40 seats.
Lefist alliance Popular Unity (UP, includes United Left) could only retain 2 seats, as many of their voters likely chose to support Podemos instead.
Catalan parties Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Democracy and Freedom (DiL, includes Catalan president Artur Mas’s party CDC) won 9 and 8 seats each. This means that for the first time ever, 17 pro-independence Catalan MPs will seat in the Spanish Congress.
Pro-sovereignty, centre-right Basque Nationalist Party PNV won 6 seats while pro-independence, left-wing EH Bildu could only retain 2.
Two Canary Islands parties won one seat each. Centrist party Canarian Coalition (CC) and left-of-centre New Canarias (NC) managed to retain the seats they had already won in 2011.
Unclear alliances in Congress
It is unclear how a majority will be formed in the Congress. On the one hand, right-wing parties PP and C's have failed to reach the combined 176-seat figure that mark the absolute majority. But the same is true for left-wing PSOE, Podemos and their allies.
So one option could be a PP-PSOE grand coalition, which would go against a very well established tradition of both parties never ruling the country together.
Another way out of a hung parliament could be a PSOE-Podemos coalition with outside support from either centralist C's or Catalan pro-independence parties. The first option would need to overcome an important ideological gap between C's and Podemos, wile the second appears even more complicated. ERC would likely only accept it in exchange for a Catalan independence referendum -to which Podemos has committed- which PSOE has vowed not to hold.
Huge pro-self-determination majority in Catalonia
Out of 47 seats elected in Catalonia, 29 went to parties or alliances advocating the Catalans’ right to decide their own future as a distinct nation. Of those, 17 went -as already said- to explicitly pro-indepedence parties, while the other 12 were won by En Comú Podem, an alliance made up of Spanish parties Podemos, United Left and Equo, plus Catalan parties ICV and Barcelona En Comú. En Comú Podem says the Spanish government should allow Catalonia to hold a referendum on independence, and seeks to turn the Spanish state into a plurinational country made up of “free, equal peoples”.
Valencian Country: PP almost halved
After having won 20 seats in 2011, PP yesterday saw their share of seats almost halved in the Valencian Country (11). És El Moment alliance came close to Rajoy’s party in Valencia, winning 9 seats. The alliance is made up by Podemos and pro-sovereignty Compromís alliance, which in 2011 won its first seat ever.
Basque parties lose ground
In a landmark win, Podemos yesterday emerged as the largest party in the Basque Country as a whole, signaling a decline of pro-sovereignty and pro-independence parties. Podemos won 7 seats (5 in Euskadi and 2 in Navarre) while PNV managed to win 6 seats (up from 5 in 2011). It was much worse for EH Bildu, which could only secure 2 seats, down from 7 in 2011. Navarrese pro-sovereignty alliance Geroa Bai too lost their only seat.
Galicia: BNG loses all seats, Anova succeeds
For the first time since the 1990s, the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) lost all its seats in the Spanish Congress. But this does not mean that Galician parties will no longer have their own MPs in Madrid, since pro-independence Anova captured 2 seats as one of the members of left-wing En Marea alliance, which brought together that party plus Podemos, United Left and Marea Galega.
En Marea (6 seats) came second in Galicia, only after PP, which became again the largest party (10 seats, down from 15 four years ago).