Politics

The conservative Popular Party won the legislative elections in Spain

But no party can govern alone

Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the pools
(Source: Rosana Rivera)
USPA NEWS - The conservative Popular Party won the legislative elections held in Spain this Sunday. But according with the previsions, the pacts between parties will be necessary in the new legislature. The conservatives obtained 136 deputies and only with the support by the extreme right party Vox can reach an absolute majority. The Socialist Party obtained 122 deputies. The participation was 70.30 percent, 4.07 percent more than in the previous legislative elections, with an abstention rate of 29.69 percent.
After conservatives and socialists, the extreme right represented in Vox and the extreme left represented in Sumar, the coalition led by the until now Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, achieved 33 and 31 deputies, respectively. Behind, the Catalan nationalist and pro-independence parties, ERC and Junts per Catalunya, obtained seven deputies each. Bildu's Basque separatists won six seats, while the Basque Nationalist Party won five seats and three regionalist parties – the Bloque Nacionalista Galego, Canary Islands Coalition and Unión del Pueblo Navarro – each won one seat.
With these results, as acknowledged by the conservative leader and probable future president of the Spanish Government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, "the Spaniards have told us that we must agree." Because no party can govern alone. The conservative Popular Party could agree with the far-right Vox, with the Basque Nationalist Party, with the Canary Islands Coalition and with the Unión del Pueblo Navarro, and would achieve the absolute majority necessary to carry out its government program. For its part, the Socialist Party could agree with the communist-inspired extreme left represented in Sumar, with the Catalan nationalists and independentists and with the Basque independentists, but it could only govern if the Popular Party did not agree with its natural allies.
"Let no one be tempted to block" the formation of a new government, warned the conservative leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, from his party headquarters on election night. Never, he said, has the party with the most votes ceased to govern in Spain. A period of negotiations and uncertainty about the formation of a new government is now opening. The fact is that the conservatives obtained 47 more deputies than in 2019 and the Socialist Party, two more than then. Everyone felt like winners this Sunday.
Election day passed without incident, on a hot summer day in Spain. The candidate Núñez Feijóo promised to reform the Spanish Electoral Law "so that elections cannot be called in the months of July and August." That will be if his party achieves the necessary support to form a government, which is not certain yet, although it is most likely.
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