Snap poll to break dead lock

Frustrated PM calls for April 28 election

SPANISH Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a snap national election for April 28 yesterday after parliament voted down his budget bill, spelling an uncertain few months for a country whose political landscape is increasingly fragmented.

Spain exited a deep economic slump in 2013 but has been plagued since then by political volatility, driven by deep divisions over an independence drive in Catalonia and the emergence of new, populist parties.

Sanchez, who took office in June at the head of a minority government holding less than a quarter of parliamentary seats, called the election after his former Catalan nationalist allies refused to back his budget.

“One cannot govern without a budget,” Sanchez said in a televised address that bore hallmarks of a campaign speech, laying out his government’s achievements and saying he was seeking a broader majority to pursue a social reform agenda.

“Between doing nothing and continuing without the budget and calling on Spaniards to have their say, I choose the second. Spain needs to keep advancing, progressing with tolerance.”

Sanchez’s Socialist party leads opinion polls, but they also show that no single party would win enough votes to govern on its own.

A range of possible coalition scenarios point to lengthy negotiations between three or more parties, potentially including the far-right Vox – in what would be a first for postFranco era Spain – and tapping into a divisive and high-profile debate over Catalan separatism.

Anti-immigration Vox, one of several emerging parties that have ripped apart the two-party establishment that has alternated power since Spain’s democracy was re-established after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, saw its first electoral success in December.

Twelve of its lawmakers were elected to Andalusia’s regional parliament, where it is backing the ruling administration, and in April it seems certain to enter the national parliament and possibly the government. |