Spain’s 2019 snap general election is the country’s third election in just over three years.
In those years, the country has spent more than 10 months under a caretaker government
and has had no lasting majority in parliament.
The results of the snap election were inconclusive.
Pedro Sanchez and his Socialist party won 29% of the vote,
but fell short of what they needed to form a majority government on their own.
So why is Spain’s government so unstable?
Some experts say Spain’s constitution is the main reason for the country’s political uncertainty.
The document was drawn up in 1978 after the death of long-time dictator Francisco Franco.
It was designed to create a stable democracy, to move power away from Madrid
and grant it to the provinces and regions.
It helped to strengthen the role of political parties but weakened the influence of individual citizens.
As a consequence, just two political movements have dominated almost ever since:
the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, known as PSOE
and the conservative People’s Party, Partido Popular.
But all that changed during the 2015 general election.
By then, Spain had suffered through years of austerity after the financial crisis of 2008.
The unemployment rate had soared to nearly 27% in 2013
and by the time voters went to the polls in 2015, it was still hovering at around 21%.
The challenging economic climate in Spain prompted widespread protests.
These soon coalesced to form an anti- austerity, anti-establishment alliance
known as Unidas Podemos, Spanish for “together we can.”
Another political force in the Catalonia region, Ciudadanos, the Citizens party,
campaigned against the separatist efforts of Catalan nationalists,
who demanded the formation of an independent state, separate from the rest of Spain.
That 2015 election yielded no clear result.
The sitting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his Partido Popular lost 64 seats
and their parliamentary majority.
The two new political forces, Podemos and Ciudadanos won more than 100 seats between them,
creating the most fragmented parliament in almost four decades.
Inter-party negotiations to form a government broke down.
And so just six months after that election, Spaniards returned to the polling stations to vote again.
The outcome of that next election in 2016 also proved to be inconclusive.
Rajoy’s conservative’s won back a handful of seats but still lacked an overall majority.
It was only after lawmakers from his People’s Party joined forces with
others from the centrist Citizens party and a small Canary Islands grouping
that Rajoy secured enough votes to assemble a new minority government.
Ultimately, this was only possible because the largest opposition party, the Socialist Workers’ Party
declined to block this effort after an uprising within the party
following their own poor electoral performance.
This decision may have prevented a third election, but it had its critics.
And one was the party leader Pedro Sanchez.
He wanted to vote against the minority government, and resigned when he could not.
But two years on and Rajoy had struggled to successfully
counter the independence movement in Catalonia.
Many senior officials in his People’s Party had also been caught in an expanding corruption scandal.
By then, Sanchez was back at the top of the Socialist hierarchy, and he successfully pushed
Prime Minister Rajoy out of office in a parliamentary no-confidence vote.
He assumed office as Prime Minister in June 2018,
but he still faced many of the same issues that had troubled his predecessor.
Pedro Sanchez's socialist government was governing with only 84 of the 350 seats in Spain’s congress
and was propped up by an alliance of leftists and Basque and Catalan nationalists
united against his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy.
You see, back in October 2017, the separatist local government of Catalonia
organized a referendum on Catalan’s future in Spain and soon after declared independence.
A court in Madrid labeled the process unconstitutional,
and Spanish police soon arrested several high-profile Catalan leaders.
Those arrests came back to haunt Sanchez in the form of his 2019 budget.
Seventeen Catalan lawmakers serving in the Spanish parliament joined the opposition
and refused to back Sanchez’s proposed spending and taxation plans.
Unfortunately for Mr. Sanchez the budget debate coincided with increased attention on the
trial of 12 Catalan separatist leaders who face charges of rebellion and misuse of funds.
Many see his attempts to diffuse the Catalan conflict
as a contributing factor to rising nationalist sentiment.
He's received criticism from leaders on the right for talking to the separatist government
here in Barcelona and for funneling 18.5% of total state spending to Catalonia,
a big increase for an already prosperous region.
Finally, unable to pass his budget, Sanchez announced yet another election.
This brings us back to his party’s victory in April.
PSOE had 38 extra lawmakers elected to the 350-seat
Congreso de los Diputados, or Congress of Deputies.
They’ll need another 53 lawmakers from other parties to form a majority.
But even if he can form a government, it’s likely he still has a number of challenges ahead.
Many in Spain thought that nationalism was a thing of the past, but its rising popularity
has coincided with, not just increasing anger toward the mainstream parties' tackling of the Catalan crisis,
but also the country becoming a leading European destinations for migrants.
Sanchez’s policies toward migrants, as well as others like raising the minimum wage
and appointing a female-dominated cabinet, have appealed to and strengthened his liberal base.
But Spain’s far-right party, Vox, is also making gains.
It won 24 seats in April, in its first-ever national election.
The party had already surprised many observers at the end of 2018 when it won a notable chunk
of the local electorate in the southern region of Andalucia.
Vox’s success in Andalucía was the first time a far-right party had entered mainstream politics
since the end of General Franco’s decades-long dictatorship in the 1970s.
And these are just some of the contentious issues threatening Spain’s political stability.
Sanchez will need to also tackle Spain’s structural economic problems, particularly
the high unemployment rate that disproportionately impacts the country’s younger generation.
And of course he must also propose a budget that can actually win parliamentary approval.
But for many political experts, it is major political reforms
that remain the most pressing long-term priority.
This most recent election has further cemented the country’s shift to a multi-party system.
And under the current electoral process, it will be difficult to form a strong and stable government.
As populist parties continue to rise and center left parties falter in Europe and beyond,
many are keeping a close eye on Spain to see if its political deadlock can be broken
and the country’s government can successfully govern again.
Hi guys, thanks for watching our Explainer.
We'd love to know your thoughts on Spain's current political situation.
Why don't you comment below the video to let us know and don't forget to follow the page.