10
takeaways from Spain’s election
Vexing
math, an end of the old two-party system and, once more, a pivotal
role for Catalonia.
By JEREMY CLIFFE
12/21/15, 12:34 AM CET
MADRID — In the
build-up to Sunday’s election in Spain, news reports clung to the
assertions that it would be both unpredictable and an earthquake.
Predictably, the result was an earthquake. As polls had long
suggested it would, the governing Popular Party (PP) came first. As
much rumor had predicted — including one muttered to Angela Merkel
by Mariano Rajoy in Brussels earlier this week — the hard-left
Podemos came almost second in vote-share, though firmly behind the
center-left Socialists (PSOE) in seats. The insurgent liberal party,
Ciudadanos, came in fourth after a punishing election campaign. With
the final results still trickling in, here is what we know.
1. Rajoy has defied
political physics
Spain’s economic
and political crisis peaked about halfway through Rajoy’s first
term as prime minister and it seems the timing has been favorable to
him. While the PP’s vote-share has fallen from 44.6 percent in 2011
to 28.7 percent, that it has remained in the lead is a tribute to
slowly improving levels of economic confidence in a country where
unemployment remains eye-wateringly high and the memories of “la
crisis” remain fresh. The PP has clung on despite shocks that would
have destroyed other European governments. If it stays in power it
will do so as a minority government, lurching from vote to vote, but
in the circumstances, even this is an achievement.
2. Congratulations,
Jorge y Soraya
That achievement is
as much down to the unpopular Rajoy’s two closest lieutenants as it
is to him. The first of the duo is his campaign director, Jorge
Moregas. He was the man behind the PP’s concentrated attack on
Ciudadanos, whose free-market outlook threatened to sap the governing
party’s support in the big cities. By painting Albert Rivera, its
leader, as inexperienced and scaremongering about the possibility of
Podemos involvement in an anti-PP coalition government, the PP
appears to have won back several crucial points in the final weeks of
the campaign. This was also thanks to Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría,
the PP’s Number Two. The Moregas strategy was to run two
presidential candidates: Rajoy would tour small-town Spain exuding
old-school authority while Sáenz would concentrate on the big cities
as the face of a renewed, young, liberal, modern PP willing to tackle
the corruption and abuses of which it had been accused in government.
She was the ultimate anti-Ciudadanos weapon and, it seems, she
generally succeeded.
3. Ciudadanos could
be powerful losers
With 94 percent of
districts counted, the PP and Ciudadanos are — when added together
— on 162 seats and thus not far off a majority (176 seats) in
Spain’s lower house. Though on 40 seats and thus up 40 since the
2011 election, Rivera’s party has underperformed its poll standing
of a few weeks ago. Still, it is Rajoy’s preferred — perhaps only
possible — governing partner. In the days before the election
Rivera committed to letting the largest party govern by abstaining in
the congressional vote on the new government. Yet he would seek to
exact a price. Following local elections in May, his party has
propped up administrations in regional governments across Spain. It
has typically demanded that figures associated with corruption go,
that primaries be held, and that economic reforms proceed.
At a national level
the equivalent could be the symbolically important replacement of
Rajoy for Sáenz, the abolition of the Senate (Spain’s upper house,
an emblem of the cozy political “casta” and a bastion of the PP)
and electoral reform to make the system less favorable to
“bipartidismo”, or the two-party, PP-PSOE establishment. Whether
Rivera can demand this depends on the final numbers and,
specifically, whether the roughly 20 MPs from regional parties
(especially those from Catalonia and the Basque Country) can be
bought off and thus persuaded to let a PP-led government continue.
4. Fresh elections
may beckon
If a deal between
the PP, Ciudadanos and small, regional parties cannot be forged,
three other options are arithmetically possible: a German-style grand
coalition of PP and PSOE, and a coalition of anti-PP parties
including the PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos and a coalition of the
left. All look unlikely. To enter a grand coalition would be suicide
for the PSOE, its leader Pedro Sánchez loathes Rajoy and the whole
edifice would be anathema to Spain’s broadly adversarial political
culture. Meanwhile, Rivera has ruled out supporting a government
involving Podemos and insisted that the largest party should govern.
To support an anti-PP coalition, he would have to demonstrate to his
supporters that none of the alternatives were viable and offer
enormous concessions. This is hard to imagine. The only other
alternative — and the most likely one — would be a deal between
the PSOE, Podemos and the smaller, regional parties. This would turn
on major constitutional reform possibly including a federal
settlement for Spain and the resignation of Sánchez in favour of
Susana Díaz, president of Andalusia and a figure more favorable to
other parties. Otherwise fresh elections may beckon.
5. Podemos has done
well
To support the party
of the ponytailed Pablo Iglesias in the past months has been to ride
a rollercoaster. Having peaked at around 28 percent in January and
plunged to half that just a couple of months ago, Podemos soared
through the final weeks of the election. Its final result, some 69
seats in the lower house, is deflated by the Spanish electoral
system, which punishes parties outside the old two and those
strongest in big cities. Indeed, were seats allocated proportionally,
exit polls suggest that Podemos might be ahead of the PSOE. If there
is one thing that leftists outside Spain can learn from Iglesias and
his gang, it is that it can make sense to configure a political party
as a federation of local groups rather than a single, monolithic
organization. By franchising left-leaning civil society bodies in
Barcelona, Valencia and Galicia (and, less formally, in Madrid),
Podemos — a party founded just two years ago — has been national,
insurgent and exciting while also possessing local roots.
6. Spain has a new
political divide: Old vs. New
Spain is now a
country of four main parties. Yet their support is not evenly
distributed. In small-town and rural Spain, the old PP-PSOE order
lives on. Andalusia remains a Socialist (PSOE) stronghold. Castile
and Leon remain a bastion of the PP. Such regions increasingly have
something in common: their sturdy loyalty to old parties dogged by
corruption scandals and responsibility for Spain’s economic crisis.
In big cities like Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, by contrast, the
new parties — Podemos and Ciudadanos — are storming ahead. So
Spain is still a country divided (as it has been for so long, and so
deeply) between left and right. But it is now a country also divided
between old politics and new, between big cities and small.
7. The two-party
structure is dead
Following the Franco
years, Spain’s democracy was designed to promote the sort of stable
— comfortable, even — two-party order that had thus far eluded a
country whose politics had long been defined by fragmentation and
violent confrontation. This succeeded. But the side-effect of the
long-years of PP-PSOE rule, in which the two parties typically took
about three-quarters of votes, was to nurture croneyism, corruption
and complacency. That has now been blown out of the water.
“Bipartidismo,” insofar as the term describes the hegemony of PP
and PSOE, is dead. Whether a new two-party order will emerge —
perhaps a reformed PP against Podemos — is not yet clear. This
turns on the events of the coming weeks: which parties (if any) end
up in government and whether the PP, if it continues to lead, is
forced to reform the electoral system. The only certainty is change.
8. A puny prime
minister
In Spain’s
post-dictatorship democracy to date, no party has come first in a
national election on under 34.4 percent of the vote (38.8 percent, if
you only count the era, since 1982, of PP-PSOE dominance). Yet now
the PP has just 28.7 percent. Which begs the question: is it right,
in a country where the largest party enjoys unusually strong powers
over the legislative process, that an outfit with little more than a
quarter of the vote should dominate politics, over parties only
slightly less popular than itself, for a full parliamentary term?
Whether the election produces serious political reform depends on the
constellation of parties, as discussed above, but even if not, Rajoy
will be more dependent on forces outside his own than any Spanish
leader in generations.
9. More
fragmentation in Catalonia
Spain’s election
is an interlude in a drama otherwise continuing of its own accord:
Catalonia’s bid for independence. In September, elections in the
region produced a majority (in seats, though not in votes) for
secession. Yet the intervening months have seen it fragment, with the
left-nationalist CUP refusing to join with other pro-independence
forces in endorsing the centrist Artur Mas as president. If Mas does
not do a deal soon, he may have to return to the voters. Yet the
results of the general election in Catalonia are bad for him. His CiU
(Convergence and Union) having recently split into devolutionists and
secessionists, he led the secessionist bit — now named Democracy
and Freedom (DiL) — into the vote on December 20. The result was a
fall in support as both the ERC (a leftier pro-independence outfit)
and Podem (the local Podemos-backed party) soared ahead, particularly
in Barcelona. This both weakens Mas’ hand in negotiations with the
CUP and makes the prospects for his party worse in any new elections.
If there is a glimmer of light for Catalan nationalists, it is that
the local success of Podemos strengthens the otherwise
independence-agnostic party’s call for a referendum thus far denied
by Madrid.
10. The Catalans may
be the key
Much of what happens
now turns on events in Catalonia. There, any anti-PP deal may be
forged. There, any PP-led government may also achieve the numbers it
needs. There, any new constitutional settlement might succeed or
fail. There, Podemos has attained its most striking success. There,
Ciudadanos has its base and is thus most sensitive. The coming weeks
will bring wrangling and constitutional debate. It is inconceivable
that Spain’s most heterodox, wealthy and European region will not
be at the center of what comes next. Stay tuned.
Jeremy Cliffe is The
Economist’s Bagehot columnist.
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