What does Pedro Sánchez's triumph mean?

They have not pbaded

By Héctor Barbotta *

The Spain of Lorca and Machado breathe a sigh of relief. The polls buried yesterday the possibility of a reactionary government conditioned by a rise of the right which, in December of last year, had already brought about a political change in Andalusia, the most populous region of the country, and now threatened to do it all over Spain.

This required electoral mobilization with few precedents – more than 75% of participation – and the concentration of the majority progressive vote among PSOE candidates. Yesterday's elections reaffirmed the thesis that a high participation rate in Spain still benefits the left.

The Spanish parliamentary system and its electoral law punish the dispersion of the vote. The right, divided into three options – the conservatives of the popular party, the liberals of the citizens and the Vox ultras – added 42.81% of the votes and only 147 seats; to its left, the PSOE and Podemos, with 43%, got 165, against 11 only out of the 176 who give the absolute majority that allows to invest the president in a first vote and to rule without fear. Nationalists and regional parties have, as usual, the key, but any possibility that does not go through the re-election of Socialist Pedro Sanchez for the next four years is excluded.

The general secretary of the PSOE was the big winner of the evening. After contacting the government on 1 June of last year with a motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy that was manifested after the structural corruption of the PP was reflected in a decision of justice, he was able to capitalize on the vote the strong social profile printed at his direction. during these ten months with measures such as the increase of the minimum wage to 900 euros, the extension of the paternity leave or the reduction of the VAT applied to the bread, approved by the last Council of Ministers only 48 hours before the elections.

The electoral mobilization that gave victory to the PSOE, the largest since 2004, is not explained, however, in the social profile of the Sánchez government and in the fear aroused in progressive Spain by the irruption of the extreme right of Vox and La Mimic who made his speech Pablo Casado, the young conservative puppy who has taken control of the Popular Party since the departure of Mariano Rajoy.

Perched on the territorial conflict in Catalonia, which feeds the nationalist feeling and exacerbates the atmosphere of the most conservative Spain, Vox ultras has managed to win its place with an uncomplicated extremist discourse which, in addition to proposing an authoritarian response to Catalan challenge, puts the other issues such as their confrontation with the feminist movement or the defense of contested traditions such as hunting or bullfighting.

The People's Party, far from marking extreme distances with the far right, like conservative European parties, has joined this speech, a strategy that has proven to be catastrophic for their interests. He lost more than half of the seats and had the worst result in his history.

The ultras Vox, although they enter the Congress with the addition of 24 deputies, are very far from the expectations that the result in Andalusia had awakened them.

Ciudadanos is one of the most favored right-wing forces, a liberal formation that also advocates a radical solution against Catalan secessionism, from 32 to 57 seats.

We can pay a heavy price for the internal crisis that led to the departure of his most brilliant strategists, tired of Pablo Iglesias personalism, but who can play an important role despite the pbadage of 71 to 42 deputies. It all depends on whether Sanchez looks to his left to get the support he needs or does it to his right, as he had tried four years ago, by signing a pact that did not succeed with Citizen Albert's leader. Rivera. The sum of the PSOE and the citizens would be enough to not need another support. Yesterday evening, however, socialist sympathizers chanted two slogans in front of the headquarters of the PSOE in Madrid: "No pasarán!" And "Con Rivera no!"

The nationalist parties, Basque and Catalan, also took advantage of the fear of the far right. Some results have been spectacular. Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña (left-wing separatists), led by its chief leader, Oriol Junquera, jailed for a year and tried for the cause of the independence process, was the most voted force and sits in Congress with 15 deputies . Your support can be fundamental if Sanchez decides to accept the left. In this community, the representation of the People's Party has grown from six to one. Only Marquesa Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, born in Madrid but educated in Argentina and related to the Peralta Ramos family, will go to Congress.

In the Basque Country, nationalist forces, both conservative and leftist, have risen sharply. There, the people's party lost both seats.

* Master's degree in political communication.

More left than right

By Alfredo Serrano Mancilla and Sergio Pascual *

The demo is over. It is time to badyze the votes. Reading the electoral result in Spain has many advantages:

1. It was said, but now it's final, bipartisanship is over. We went from 2 to 5 games with a dimension of state. The two main parties, PSOE and PP, now represent 46% of the vote (53.7% of the congress), against 85.25% in 2008 (92.3%).

2. The bipartite system dies but the right / left ideological divide does not end. Not counting the regional and nationalist parties, the sum of the three rights, PP, Citizens and Vox, (42.8%) does not exceed the sum represented progress, PSOE and United We Can (42.99), nor in votes nor the deputies.

3. The PSOE becomes the first political force and breathes air into a hard-hit social democracy in Europe. He almost doubles the second game in terms of seats. It increases a lot in votes (6%) and MPs. He got income on the motion of censure and the months of government; He has taken his most progressive side and this is always appreciated by his potential electorate. The normal thing is that Sanchez is the next president.

4. Batacazo of the PP that jeopardizes his future as an alpha right party. With just over 200,000 votes of citizens, their own continuity is compromised. He gets half the percentage of the votes of 2016: they had 33% at the time of the previous electoral appointment (year 2016) to 16.6% at the present time. They were wrong to try to extract the speech of the extreme right. And in the elections, it is best not to forget that "the original is always chosen and not the copy".

5. The hard programming rhetoric of the "straightforward" right was represented by Vox and snatched two and a half million votes (10%) from the PP. He enters Parliament with 24 seats. And they are what they are: the remnants of sociological Francoism that still persist in Spanish society. But we must not overestimate either, because it represents 1 in 10 Spanish.

6. Citizens come out well in this election, with a third vote force (15.85%) and a number of seats very close to the second (PP). They are successfully positioning themselves as a more modern and obviously very Spanish right-wing liberal. With its growth, every day is closer to challenging the hegemony of the right.

7. We can hold. He leaves more than 320,000 votes and a few seats from what he realized in 2016. He suffers a hefty penalty from the electoral law in Spain emptied. In the game of expectations, the results are better than expected and this time, it may be that "less, it is more" because it is the main force to form the government.

8. Plurinationality is a reality that can not be ignored. Nationalist, Catalan and Basque forces have emerged strongly reinforced at the electoral level.

Everything seems to indicate that there is some stability in Spanish politics. It will be difficult, even for the powerful Spanish political power, to avoid a Portuguese government with a PSOE that will have to rely on Podemos Podemos and specific alliances with autonomist forces. This opens up a long negotiation cycle in which the PSOE has the best card hand, but in politics, as in poker, this is not always enough.

* Celag.