Has Spain Voted To Move To The Right? The Results Are Unclear

Has Spain voted to move to the right? The results are unclear. At the moment, no party or coalition appears to have enough votes to form a government. The center-right Popular Party received the most votes of any one party, but not close to enough to form a government on their own.

To become Spain’s prime minister, a candidate whose party has not secured a governing majority needs to either get the backing of 176 of the total 350 MPs in an initial vote in parliament. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s Popular Party controls 136 seats in parliament. The right wing Vox party controls 33 seats. Even a coalition between the two is not enough.

The problem is that the parties whom Feijóo needs to gain support of to create a majority, have mutually exclusive wishes. Vox Secretary-General Ignacio Garriga stated that his party is not interested in supporting a prime minister that is also backed by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), one of the groups whose votes Feijóo would need to become prime minster.

For their part, the PNV’s leader Andoni Ortuzar has said that his group was not interested in even meeting to discuss the possibility of a Popular Party-led government. The only way Feijóo could become Prime Minister is if Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s 122 Socialist MPs agree to not vote against his hypothetical candidacy. This is a scenario that will never happen.

On the left, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hopes to form a coalition with the left-wing Sumar coalition. Sanchez aims to secure the support of a hodgepodge of Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist groups. Even that would only work if the Catalan separatist group Junts, which has said it will not back the Socialists, abstains in the vote.

While the center-right Popular Party won the most votes, the results were a bit of a disappointment for the right. The Popular Party was expected to secure an outright majority and now face an unclear path towards that expected majority. It is possible that neither right nor left will be able to reach a deal, and a new election is called.

At the moment, Spain sits in political limbo. It remains to be seen how behind the scenes dealmaking on both the right and the left pan out. Many assumed Spain would move right in this election. Has Spain voted to move to the right? The results are unclear. There is one thing we know for sure though. Neither the right nor the left has a clear mandate in Spain.