The Stalemate in Spain (Falls Mainly on Our Patience)
The Spanish media declared the Partido Popular the winner of the election, but no one expects a government, just a second election.
After our discussion of what might ensue after a deadlocked Canadian election, which is what the polls are suggesting even though no one uses the term, the Spanish parliamentary election was well-timed, and produced a similar result. The snap general election, which Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called after the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party suffered catastrophic defeat in a series of local elections during May, had produced not just a hung parliament, but a deadlocked parliament. The Spanish Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Cortes Generales, is elected by proportional representation using closed party lists and the “D’Hondt method” for allocating seats. As such, no party will win an outright majority and coalition government is the norm. Furthermore, regional parties are common, especially in the Basque Country and Catalonia, meaning that Spain has a very consociational political system. In other words, we are about to see how a system extremely unlike Canada’s majoritarian first-past-the-post deals with a result quite similar to the one Canada is about to face.
This election featured two coalition governments in waiting, and voters knew ahead of time which parties would cooperate after the election. The Socialists (PSOE) and a collection of fifteen leftist parties presenting a joint list called “Sumar” (literally, added together) represented the left, and the People’s Party (PP) and the authoritarian right-wing Vox campaigned on the conservative end. The final result, as we have indicated, was a stalemate. The conservatives won 169 seats, and the left 153, both short of the 176 needed to “invest” a prime minister. Small parties elected 28 members, most of them committed to regional independence and not inclined to support either potential government. At this point, some important differences from the Westminster system come into play. In Canada, or another British-inspired system, the incumbent would have the first move, and must assemble the new legislature or resign. In Spain, the government expires with the old parliament, and only remains in office as a caretaker with no automatic right to continue. King Felipe will ask someone to form a government in due time, but only after a party can assemble a majority coalition. Parliament, however, elects the prime minister by majority vote, whereas the British monarch or the Canadian governor-general directly asks a prime minister to form the government. Spanish media openly said that the PP “won” the election by winning the most stats, but qualified that by noting that it may not be able to form a government (one could argue that “winning’ means forming a government–the Spanish media evidently do not). They also note that the PSOE could lead a legitimate government if it assembled a majority, but this would require support from the Basque and Catalan parities, which was controversial in the last parliament.
Therefore, it appears that the PP has the best, and perhaps the only, opportunity to form a government, with Vox as its partner. Vox is itself controversial. Vox dates to 2013, when a group of PP members left the party to move to the hard right. It is openly nostalgic for the Franco dictatorship, rejects global warming as a political issue, and is nationalist to the point that it calls for the unilateral annexation of Gibraltar. Vox has never been part of a government, and the prospect of it entering government caused it to lose a third of its seats relative to the last parliament. Its stumble in fact prevented the right from winning its expected majority. However, the PP has little hope of governing alone.
It is already clear at this point that no one can govern in the new parliament, and that there will be a second election, likely not before 2024. Both the PP and Vox are hostile to Basque and Catalan nationalism, and in the face of firm rejection of the small parties, have no path to the 176 votes needed to elect PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo as prime minister. However, the second election will not come quickly. The rest of the year will be taken up by coalition negotiations between PP and Vox, which may not be smooth, followed by one or more investiture votes that we can expect to fail. In the wake of this, there may be a vote to reelect Prime Minister Sánchez, which will also fail. Another possible government would be a grand coalition of the PP and the PSOE, The Socialists clearly prefer a second election over allowing Feijóo to govern, and recent polarization would make a coalition of left and right awkward at best. However, the process of government formation, in the face of deadlock, is generally given five to six months before the parties agree to hold a new election, much slower in a Westminster system, in which each side would get one chance to seek the confidence of the house before there would be a dissolution.
In the Canadian system, the largest party forms a minority government and attempts to govern alone, typically until it is brought down by the opposition parties acting together, at which point there is a new election. The opposition parties typically avoid being blamed for forcing an early election, and that reticence is often enough to keep the minority government in power for a while. The defeat of Joe Clark’s minority government after nine months in 1979 was an aberration (the mathematical deadlock was severe), and minorities generally govern for about two years. On the other hand, Spaniards are used to having to vote twice to get a government, accepting that in a consociational system, having no one win is a plausible and common enough result. After a Canadian election, everyone can take a vacation–the majoritarian system will insist that someone won, even if the government does not last. In Spain, everyone will take a vacation anyway, for it is mid-summer, but with an eye on parliament and the impending new election.
References:
https://resultados-elecciones.rtve.es/generales/2023/congreso/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/24/world/europe/spain-election-vox-party.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66287757
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66246030
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/gibraltar-fears-rise-of-vox-in-spanish-election
https://jacobin.com/2021/08/spain-andalusia-far-right-vox-culture-war-francoism-gibraltar