No clear winner means a lot talking
With no party gaining an absolute majority from the 20-D general election, alliances and coalitions are now inevitable
Last month's general election on December 20 left plenty of unanswered questions. The 12th general election since Spain transitioned to democracy created a political panorama of unprecedented complexity worthy of the series of thorny political issues thrown up in recent times.
As the results were coming in, it quickly became clear that none of the parties would win a decisive enough majority from a polling day that saw a 73.2% turnout, compared with the 71% of four years ago. In Catalonia, the turnout was 70.7%, also higher than the 66.8% turnout of the 2011 general election.
Majority lost
While the Partit Popular won, as was expected, its absolute majority from the previous term became history. And the fall in support was large. The number of seats for Mariano Rajoy's party dropped from 168 to 123, and the back-up plan of drafting in Ciutadans as a partner in government was also scuppered as Albert Rovira's party gained 40 seats, not enough to gain the 176 needed for an absolute majority.
The game of political sudoku becomes more complicated when PSOE's worst showing ever is taken into account. The Socialists dropped from 110 to 90 seats and even a leftwing coalition with Podem, which won 69 seats in the lower chamber, would not give Spain's other political giant enough for an absolute majority either. The only alliance of two parties that would provide such a majority would be a pact between PP and PSOE, a possibility that both parties ruled out in the days leading up to the election. The Spanish political landscape, which since 1982 has swung from the red of PSOE to the blue of PP, in these elections now includes the colours orange and purple. The two-party monopoly is broken and now there are four players on the political stage in Spain.
The results on December 21 were the worst for PP since 1989 and signalled the biggest decline in PSOE's general election history. Meanwhile, the election confirmed the rise of Podem and scuppered the expectations of Ciutadans, which some polls had placed in the lead. Now, Spanish politics, unaccustomed to negotiating parliamentary alliances, will be forced to reach agreements with potential allies in order to have a functioning government.
Big day for minnows
This immediately raises the profile of the smaller parties in Congress, which will become key to any understandings reached. At stake among the horse-trading will be a possible binding referendum for Catalonia, promised by Pablo Iglesias in the campaign and reaffirmed once the results had come in.
Apart from the arithmetic, it will be interesting to see how the 20-D results affect the various parties internally. An example is PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez, support for whom went down across the state except for in Andalusia, which is the territory of his rival for the party leadership, Susana Díaz.
In Catalonia, the political landscape left by the general election of 2011 has been turned upside down. En Comú Podem, with 12 seats, was the big winner, and the coalition of leftwing parties under historian Xavier Domènech repeated the success in May's local elections, which saw Ada Colau take up the mayoralty of Barcelona.
En Comú Podem, which will have its own parliamentary group, is part of the bloc in favour of the right to decide, which boasts the historic figure of 29 MPs in Madrid. To Domènech's party's seats can be added the eight of Democràcia i Llibertat and ERC's nine. There has never before been as many MPs openly favouring independence in the Madrid Congress.
In the biggest rise in support in a statewide election, the Republicans came in second. Gabriel Rufián's party have from the beginning been open to cooperation with En Comú Podem.
Meanwhile, PSC, under Carme Chacón, came in third, dropping from 14 to eight seats, with Democràcia i Llibertat, which brings together CDC, Reagrupament and Demòcrates de Catalunya under Francesc Homs, did worse than expected, also with eight seats. Ciutadans makes its debut with five MPs in Catalonia, PP drops from 11 to five seats and Unió disappears from the Spanish political map.
In the Senate, the supporters of the right to decide are well represented, while the talks on investing Artur Mas as president continue between Junts pel Sí and CUP. The stage is set, and now it is time to wait while the parties do – a lot – of talking.
Comparing support for independence on 27-S and 20-D
The pro-independence candidates of ERC and Democràcia i Llibertat (DL) gained some 17 of the 47 seats available to Catalan political parties in the Spanish parliament. In terms of percentages, independence support won 31% of the vote. In relation to the 27-S Catalan elections, pro-independence parties lost 465,000 votes, and this is without the electoral competition provided by CUP, which did not stand in the general election and gained 337,794 votes on 27-S. However, polls suggest that some of these votes will have gone to ERC. In percentage terms, ERC and DL separately lost 8% of their votes and support for independence in the Spanish general election dropped by more than 16 points, from 47.8% on 27-S to 31% on 20-D.