PSOE and Sumar’s resistance frustrates the majority of PP and Vox and leaves all possibilities open

Just a week ago, the People’s Party dreamed of 168 seats and a landslide victory that would allow it to govern on its own, without Vox. But resistance left that exceeded expectations, with PSOE dramatically improving 2019 results Against all odds, Alberto Nunez Figo left such a narrow victory that he doesn’t even add to Vox, UPN and the Canary Coalition. The result in votes was even more surprising than that reflected in the seats: the People’s Party won the election for the Socialist Workers’ Party by just over 300,000 votes. It is a victory, but so small, so similar to that of José María Aznar in 1996, that it leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of the popular leadership, which at no time doubted that it would have an absolute majority with Vox. The numbers are so narrow that they leave judgment up in the air: the current bloc would have 172 seats, and would need at least a Yones abstention to make Pedro Sanchez president, and the right-wing bloc only has 171 as long as the PNP stays with the PSOE. A parliament that comes out from the polls allows Sanchez to repeat his majority, though this time he will need Jontz abstains and ERC and Bildu upvote, and makes it very difficult for Feijóo to achieve this, since he does not have the necessary support to invest it unless there are changes in the primary positions of the major parties such as the PNV. “The non-revolutionary bloc has failed. There are more Spaniards who want Spain to advance and this is the way things will go on,” exulted Pedro Sánchez shouted jubilantly at the door of her headquarters. Drop the president so he will try to govern. They have made the sum of the right fail, admitted Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox. Spain came to siege, while Madrileño’s guerrillas shouted “Vote for Xbuti” and “Ayusu! Ayusu!”. The PPP leader will undoubtedly try this position as the winner of the elections, but it is very likely that he will not succeed and from there will come Sanchez’s opportunity.

The surprise and frustration that reigned at PP headquarters contrasted with the irrepressible joy at PSOE headquarters. Despite the electoral defeat, which Figo will try to exploit to ask the Socialists to abstain from voting – even Pedro Sánchez has achieved something that seemed impossible less than two months ago, when he decided to take the many leap into the void, advancing the general elections the day after the defeat of the majority – even in the municipal and municipal elections of May 28: improving his results by more than 700,000 votes and seeking more seats in 2019. More complicated than the current situation but not impossible to rule . The Socialists believe that abstaining from Junts could be enough for them to be able to get a majority greater than the People’s Party majority with Vox supporting the UPN and the Canary Islands Alliance.

The situation left behind by the congressional ballot box is very complicated, and it is almost impossible to solve it. The possibility of a blockade is a reality, although the catastrophe of the last electoral iteration, that is, the catastrophe of 2019, can serve as an antidote to avoid this temptation. At the moment, there are two possible majorities, depending on what each side has said, although many weeks of complex negotiations lie ahead. On the one hand, there are the most obvious ones, PP with Vox, UPN and Coalición Canaria, a party that many place with the popular masses because with them they rule over the islands. But that amount is still at 171, far from the absolute Feijóo dreamed of and that many pollsters have taken for granted in recent weeks, although it’s not 40dB. for EL PAÍS and Cadena SER.

Another possible majority is that of the PSOE with Sumar, who managed to fight back in 31 seats – United Podemos got 35 – although it remained just under 20,000 votes to reach third place, which is again for Vox. They have to add to them, as he did now, PNV, ERC, Bildu and BNG votes, which is possible to install although it is always complicated. These groups have 172 seats, 171 more than the People’s Party bloc. But there the decisive one will be Jontes, Carles Puigdemont’s party. In this formula, Sanchez would not need Gonz’s affirmative vote to become president, which is hard to imagine, but an abstention would suffice. However, it is a more complex majority than the current one, which still has a long way to go before it becomes clear which of the two options can be imposed or if the blockade leads to new elections. “We will not make Pedro Sanchez president for nothing,” Miriam Nogueras, head of the Juntes list, said on election night.

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Independents could be decisive, but the result in Catalonia was disastrous for them. ERC lost six seats, one Junts – it had eight seats with PDeCAT – and CUP the two seats they had. Nine seats in total were left by independents in this election, which went particularly well for the Peace and Security Council. This result shows that Sánchez’s policy, which involved a different approach to political conflict and included amnesty and the creation of a dialogue table, was again rewarded by the Catalans – it was already rewarded in regional elections and then in municipal elections won by the Socialists – but it punished the other main party in that agreement, the ERC. On the contrary, this policy seems to have punished the Socialists in the May municipal and regional elections in the rest of Spain, but not in the general election, where there was an unexpected and very strong reactivation of the PSOE vote in the final phase of the campaign.

Feijóo is in great frustration because he knows that despite winning the minimum number of votes and having 14 more seats than the Socialists, it is entirely possible that he will not be able to govern. The former Galician president, who came from four landslides, did not leave Xunta to remain as leader of the opposition to Sánchez. All the plans of the seasoned Galician politician included ruling as his main internal ally, Juanma Moreno, who had achieved an absolute majority in Andalusia, receiving many votes from the PSOE, or something very close. Moreno will now win on points inside the PP while Feijóo may struggle to defend a result that no one expected in this match.

The first leaders consulted on the night of the election showed their disillusionment in private and spoke bluntly of the siege, thus having no possibility of judgment at the table, which they had taken for granted a few days earlier. The last phase of Feijóo’s campaign was particularly disastrous, especially after the Battle of Feijóo Book error in TVE interviewWhere he gave false information and far from correcting it, he challenged the journalist who pointed it out, Silvia Inzarondo, to apologize. Subsequently, Feijóo decided not to go into the debate to fours, something many viewed as another mistake, and saw how the debate was reinvigorated For his friendship in the 1990s with drug trafficker Marcial Dorado. Now the leader of the People’s Party will try at all costs to persuade Sanchez to let him govern with abstention, as he has already indicated in the campaign, but the chances of that happening are slim and much more so with an outcome in votes and seats as narrow as this.

Meanwhile, Sánchez once again achieved something that seemed impossible, as it always did in his entire political career. The politician considered by many to have been sacked after the municipal elections had a very uneven campaign, which got off to a strong start thanks to the governments of PP and Vox, which clearly energized the progressive vote, and then collapsed with a head-to-head debate in which he had a very bad day at the worst moment. But Sanchez’s ability to get up again and again after falls has been seen again starting this past weekend, when he picked up his powerful messages at rallies. Last week, the Socialists and some polls that could not have been published by law but are still being done, showed that there was a lot of recovery in the left vote, particularly the Socialist vote.

Yolanda Diaz, the leader of Soumar, also showed much higher resistance than expected and began to win back many votes in recent days, especially after the four-way debate in which she was the most brilliant. Diaz was elated and spoke publicly of victory this election night. “There were a lot of people worried, today I think people will sleep more peacefully. Democracy has triumphed, I came out stronger. A passionate leader said in a broken voice. Diaz succeeded in rebuilding the space on the left of the Socialist Party and thus ensured its continuity and the possibility of even returning to rule in alliance with the Socialists.

Meanwhile, Vox has achieved a secret result that although it managed to maintain third place, these seats may be useless, the worst nightmare for Santiago Abascal, who already saw himself as Vice President of Spain after the agreement with the People’s Party of Castilla y León, the Valencian Community and Extremadura. The Spanish far-right retains significant strength, but if it fails to govern, the political failure is important because the recovery of the People’s Party also makes the relationship increasingly lopsided in favor of the large party in the right-wing bloc, which will make Vox increasingly irrelevant.

The campaign, the PP agreements with Vox and the last week of Vertigo, which clearly mobilized the progressive vote much more than expected, have completely changed the expected scenario and stopped what almost everyone took for granted, namely the government of Feijóo with Abascal modeled on the Valencian community. Sanchez does his once good Resistance Handbook And again, the Spanish right is on the brink of a government that was at hand, as happened in 2012 in Andalusia, when Javier Arenas also decided, like Figo, not to participate in the debate and later admitted his mistake. All eyes will now be on the leader of the People’s Party, who had everything to rule and failed in his attempt. The Spanish political scene is completely open and the inauguration is up in the air. Spain voted in favor of a tie between the two blocs, but the numbers show that one of them, which has a current majority, has an extra seat. And that could be decisive in governing the country. If not, there will be an electoral redundancy.

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