No clear winner means a lot talking

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.