After the parliamentary election in Spain, it will come back to a left-wing minority government, writes political Analyst Salvador Llaudes in the DW-interview. Unstable this will be.
Victor Sanchez: A left-wing coalition would have to Sit 165 of 350, elf little
Deutsche Welle: After the election in Spain, neither the left nor the right-wing camp has a clear majority. What is the socialist party boss, the Prime Minister, Sanchez will try now to form a government?
Salvador Llaudes: He will try it alone once. If that doesn’t work, he will seek a coalition with the radical left-wing party Podemos. It is not true, of course, that the number of seats of both is enough for an absolute majority. But in the case of the election of the heads of government it was sufficient, if other parties would include, for example, the Basque regional party, and maybe even some separatists from Catalonia.
In this Experiment, a tolerated government is failed in the spring. Why should we repeat that now?
The election campaign has shown that all of the more left-wing parties, in each case, a majority, a government of the Right want to prevent. You definitely want that Pedro Sanchez remains Prime Minister. You will not actively support the government, but to abstain in the election of the Prime Minister, should not be so difficult. All of this is not going to happen in the next few weeks. In a month we have first of all European elections and regional elections. And then maybe before the summer break, the Prime Minister could be determined.
Salvador lauds from the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid
Pedro Sanchez has been invited to his victory party, all parties that respect the Constitution, the coalition negotiations. He will go to the liberal citizens party? He would have an absolute majority of seats in the Parliament?
He will try to be open, perhaps to get support or tolerate. But all the parties in the right of the spectrum have said clearly and loudly, that for you to Sanchez as the head of government is not an Option. Also, the more in the middle of the “citizens” have declared that they will not do it in the Opposition want. So that becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
The right-wing populist Vox is for the first Time in the Parliament. What does this mean for the political System in Spain. Will they have influence?
You got ten percent, which is of Zero, coming of course to be a great success. But it was not worse than feared. If you are comparing with other countries in Europe, ten per cent is not an excessive amount of on the right side. You could say, on the contrary, it n u r of ten percent. In order to get 24 out of 350 Seats. They will be very loud, but its actual impact will be low.
Do you think that the Vox will grow in the next time, because the issues with which the right-wing populists have scored, so the Catalonia crisis, the unity of the Spanish Nation, Migration will be done, but on the contrary, continue to remain unresolved?
Vox certainly has to remain the perspective, to be fixed. You will permanently remain as a player in the Parliament. At the same time, I do not believe that there can be on the duration of the three parties (Christian Democrats, Liberals, Vox) in the right spectrum. The Spanish electoral system can have two parties on the right and two on the left on the duration. These two camps will fight in the future, the voters favor.
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No clear winner in Parliament election in Spain
These are ten percent of the voters who voted for Vox, people, say, under the dictator Franco, everything was better, we want to return to the “good old days”?
No, not at all. Spain had since the death of Franco in 1975 and the return to democracy never been an extreme right-wing party in the Parliament. If you take the crises of the last few years, especially the Catalonia question, then the brought the voters to look for Alternatives. The are no extreme voters. Previously all voted for the conservative people’s party. They wanted to punish the people’s party. We will have to see whether this Trend continues actually. There are some Franco-nostalgic, but the are not ten percent.
The recipe of the Christian democratic people’s party, to keep the right-wing populists in check, it was easy to copy. That didn’t work. The Christian Democrats lost half their seats. Now what?
This is very, very hard for the people’s party. The losses were very large. Some of the corruption scandals and the crisis in the Catalan independence has not managed the people’s party well, as you noted even the government. For this she was punished. It will be very hard to win the confidence of the voters. However, I would not say that the people’s party is dead. In 2015, we have seen similar in the case of the socialists. As some analysts have already said, the party is done. Now the socialists are still in Power. It is not excluded that the Christian Democrats will come back.
So there will be a minority government, which will not be very stable. What this means for the economic development in Spain?
I think the government will be relatively stable. The two left parties together have 165 seats in the Parliament. This is much more than in the last ten months. The government will be able to make economic decisions with the help of regional parties. From the Moment of Pedro Sanchez again Prime is, for me, no unstable government.
What impact do you expect after this election for the elections to the European Parliament in a month?
Some say that the European elections will be a kind of second round of the parliamentary elections now. We have at the end of may regional elections. This will of course have an impact. Particularly for Christian Democrats, it is hard to keep up in the European election is now a high level of support from the voters. The socialists have a good chance to repeat their good results in the European elections and the regional elections.
Salvador Llaudes, is working as a political Analyst at the “Royal Institute Elcano”, a think tank in Madrid, with Spain’s role in Europe and in the world.