Spain’s early election signals start of political jockeying

Ingrid Melander in Madrid IN calling an early general election in Spain for April 28, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez last Friday set the stage for a divisive vote that could tilt the country towards the nationalist right.

Sanchez, whose minority Socialist government has relied on support from regional and smaller parties, called the election after Catalans who had previously backed him joined opposition parties to defeat his 2019 budget bill.

Opinion polls show no single party would win the seats to govern on its own, pointing to lengthy negotiations between three or more parties. Those could potentially include the far-right Vox party in what would be a first for Spain in the post-Franco era.

In a televised address that bore hallmarks of a campaign speech, Sanchez said he could not govern without a budget. Laying out his government’s achievements, he said he was seeking a broader majority to pursue a social reform agenda.

Spain, the eurozone’s fourth largest economy, emerged from a deep economic slump in 2013 but has seen growing political volatility, driven by deep divisions over an independence drive in Catalonia and the emergence of new, populist parties.

Sanchez’s Socialist party leads opinion polls, but with only a small advantage over the others. Five parties, from the far-left to the far-right, could hope to be in government, depending on the outcome of the vote.

One of the most likely scenarios, according to surveys, would be an alliance between the conservative People’s Party (PP), the centre-right Ciudadanos and Vox.

Anti-immigration Vox, virtually unknown just a few months ago, is one of several emerging parties that have upended the two-party establishment that has alternated in power since the return to democracy after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.

With Catalan separatist leaders on trial in Madrid for a failed independence bid in 2017 that angered many voters in the rest of Spain, that region’s uneasy relationship with central government will feature high on the electoral agenda.