Spain | Pedro Sanchez | BB | PSOE | A deep blow to the left forced Sánchez to call elections in Spain United we can vox | the world

See: Early elections in Spain: “Pedro Sanchez slaps a drowned man or the reaction of an angry child”

In the early hours of Monday 29th, Sanchez made a decision that surprised both his own and strangers after a few hours. The general elections scheduled for December this year will be brought to July 23. Sánchez explained in a press conference delivered from the Palacio de la Moncloa, “I consider the results direct, I believe it is necessary to give an answer and submit our democratic mandate to the will of the people.

After 2019, they painted almost the entire Spanish political map in red, the PSOE saw how important strongholds such as the Valencian Community, Aragon, Extremadura, La Rioja, the Balearic Islands or Cantabria would turn into the hands of their eternal rival. , the right-wing People’s Party (PP).

Overall, the PP won 31.5% of the total vote during the municipal elections, while the PSOE won 28.1%.

The panorama was encouraging to the allies of the ruling party. The far left, represented by Unidad Podemos, has retreated in all the parliaments of the autonomous communities, without representation even in Madrid’s mayor’s office. This is illustrated in a certain way in the vote distribution that prevailed after the presentation of Sumer, a party led by Yolanda Díaz, the second vice-president of the government.

The other side of the coin was enjoyed by the far-right, with Vox tripling its number of councilors and making its way into regions as reluctant as Catalonia.

“In parliamentary democracies, as in the case of Spain, the permanence of the head of government-prime minister depends on political contingency. Generally, when an imbalance or change in representation is detected, they realize that the political period has changed and hold an election. To put it in Peruvian terms is a kind of confidence vote”, Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences and Education of the UPC, Mauricio Novoa L. explained to Comercio.

Sanchez’s mistakes

Covid-19, economic turmoil and the polarization of society are three factors that have marked Sánchez’s five-year rule. The 51-year-old socialist politician, who reaped the worst results in the PSOE’s history in 2015 and 2016, came to power in June 2018 with surprise support from Catalan and Basque nationalists.

In 2019 it survived fresh elections after a crisis. His lifeline was an alliance with the far-left, which he had refused to agree to a few months earlier, promising he could not sleep peacefully at night. During his administration, Sánchez prided himself on promoting various social reforms, appointing the most female cabinet in the country’s history, and raising the minimum wage by a third in five years.

However, the opposition accuses him of making unacceptable concessions to separatists.According to the barometer of the Center for Sociological Studies (CIS), Spaniards see the economic crisis (43.5%) and unemployment (34.8%) as the country’s main problems. And Sánchez is accused of appropriating more than 10 billion euros from the public treasury for campaign promises during the last regional elections he presided over.

Among his questionable ties to radical movements is his association with EH Bildu (Euskal Herria Bildu), a coalition of leftist and far-left Basque parties whose roster includes seven convicted ETA members. Faced with corruption, Sánchez had to meet Bild’s spokesperson in Congress and tell her that “they made a mistake in drawing up the municipal lists.”

“In Spanish discourse in recent years, we see that having the flag in your house is considered fascism. Any voice that calls for some restrictions on immigration is considered fascism. You cannot live without giving credence to some reasonable claims on the other side of your ideological spectrum. This is characteristic of this radical left, represented in Podemos and in this government. power because without them Sánchez could not have formed a coalition. The results of this election have been disastrous,” explains Novoa.

Ongoing strategy

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of the PP, celebrated the early elections and confirmed that it was responding to the Spanish people’s “desire for change”. “As happened in the case of Chile in the second attempt to change the constitution, this progress favors the PP, which is considered the party of the reasonable people,” Novoa commented.

However, this could also be the last card up Sanchez’s sleeve, as it could save him 4 or 5 months of clashes with the current majority opposition that could weaken him.

The head of government, in addition, may aim to act while the ground is still shaky for his increasingly uneasy Podemos allies and force the PP into unpleasant negotiations with the increasingly demanding Vox extremists.

The latter would be a conversation in which conservatives would want to cede as little ground as possible, while the far right would seek to increase their national stake.

“We will see if they can reach political agreements in a kind of logical political maturity,” says the analyst.