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Socialists Win Divisive Spanish Elections

By Martin Arostegui April 28, 2019

Spain's governing Socialist party won the most votes in elections held Sunday but has fallen far short of an overall majority.

The highly fragmented outcome saw the conservative vote split three ways, with the surging of the far right and centrist groups eclipsing the mainstream center-right Popular Party.

With more than half the votes counted, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is headed to a victory, with an estimated 26% of the vote, giving it an estimated 123 seats in the 350-seat parliament. The party picked up 40 seats. The opposition Popular Party has received less than 20% of the votes, losing almost half its seats since 2016, falling to 65.

The centrist Ciudadanos party, which is barely 3 percentage points behind the Popular Party, has increased its representation to 57 seats, and the far-right VOX party has scored lower than expected, receiving about 10% of the vote and giving it slightly more than 20 seats. The far-left Unidos Podemos also did not fare well, dropping from 70 to 42 seats.

"The mood of the country indicates a swing towards the center," political analyst Ramon Peralta, a law professor of the the Complutense University of Madrid, said. "The three-way division of the right clearly hurt PP with many of its votes going to VOX."

Analysts contemplate a possible coalition between the Socialist and Ciudadanos parties, despite bitter rhetoric exchanged between their leaders during the campaign. Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera called Prime Minister Sanchez a traitor for negotiating with Catalan separatists and vowed not to support a new mandate for Sanchez.

But the results give no hope for the conservative dream coalition between the Popular, Ciudadanos and VOX parties, which had been suggested by leaders of the three parties.

The numbers also show that Sanchez could continue with his current governing arrangement, receiving parliamentary support from Podemos, Catalan separatists and Basque nationalists, who have also increased their representation in the national parliament.

Speaking defiantly to supporters outside his party headquaters in Madrid, VOX leader Santiago Abascal said, "Spain may be worse off today, but VOX will be in the parliament for the first time and there will be 24 deputies to defend Spain's unity and basic values."

But the mainstream Popular Party has little to celebrate.

"Things have gone very badly," party spokesman and congressional candidate Javier Fernandez Lasquetty told VOA. "We are paying a very price for high price for a fragmented right."