Some books on the Spanish transition say that Adolfo Suárez was tempted to implement the double-round electoral system, as in France. Collaborators of President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing put it out of their heads, arguing that the system imposed by General De Gaulle in France was encouraging socialists and communists to run together for the ballot (second round). “That would not be good for Spain,” they told him. Suárez’s team then devised the current proportional electoral law, the trick of which consists of a strong representation prize for the smallest rural provinces. With that law, UCD secured 165 seats in the first democratic elections in June 1977.
Pedro Sánchez has now activated a peculiar second round in Spain. On July 23 there will be a ballotage without prior elimination of contenders. Second round after municipal and regional elections that the right has wanted to turn into a great political plebiscite.
The last precedent could be found in the spring of 2019. Advised by Iván Redondo, Sánchez brought forward the general elections to April of that year after the famous photo of Colón (February) in which the three rights, the Popular Party, Ciudadanos and Vox, posed together in the central Madrid square. Two months later, in June, municipal, regional and European elections were held in one go, which went very well for the Socialist Party, to the point of introducing a risky fantasy into Sánchez’s mind: repeating the general ones to expand results and get rid of United We Can. Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias contributed to that third round. The story is well known. The generals were repeated (November 2019) and Sánchez had no choice but to agree with Podemos, while Ciudadanos crashed, facilitating the resurrection of the Popular Party.
The agitated legislature that now concludes arose from that maneuver. “Operation Columbus, second part”, headlined Lola GarcÃa yesterday in the digital edition of La Vanguardia to refer to the surprise announcement made yesterday morning by the President of the Government, after the electoral blow on Sunday.
The announcement caught the Popular Party off guard, where plans were already being made for a six-month war of attrition, to reach December with the Moncloa tenant literally scorched by the pressure of the opposition, by the powerful right-wing media army, due to the internal problems that, with all certainty, were going to arise within the PSOE after the loss of six autonomies; due to the sure crossover of reproaches between Sumar and Podemos after the bump on Sunday, due to the nervousness of Esquerra Republicana after having lost 300,000 votes in the municipal elections in Catalonia. (The PSOE has lost 400,000 votes in all of Spain). And for the good results of EH Bildu in Euskadi and Navarra, with the consequent anxiety of the Basque Nationalist Party. In Genoa they had already ordered the grills to roast Sánchez over a low heat between now and December.
It is enough to read the note issued yesterday by the FAES Foundation to capture the bad mood of what is still the main strategist of the Spanish right, José MarÃa Aznar. “The elections, the sooner the better,” declared Alberto Núñez Feijóo as soon as he had recovered from the surprise.
The electoral call announced yesterday makes it difficult for the Popular Party to exploit the success. The results of 28-M, which deserve to be explored in great detail, are already history for the information accelerators: now only the July elections will be discussed. The focus of 23-J will intensely illuminate the negotiations of the PP and Vox for the investiture of the regional leaders of the PP who must obtain the support of the extreme right to be able to govern the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Aragon and Extremadura. These negotiations will be in the foreground, unless the PP offers concertation pacts with the Socialist Party, which is somewhat improbable.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal urged the PP to reach agreements. Vox has done well in the elections outside Madrid. It has multiplied by two the results obtained in the municipal elections of 2019. Vox is not in a descending parabola and is going to fight hard for third position in the vast majority of provinces. That third position is very important in small constituencies, where there is no room for a fourth party.
And this challenges the battered left of the left, which has paid dearly for its disunity. The act of Magariños, in which it was loudly proclaimed that Yolanda DÃaz and Podemos did not agree, has had demobilizing effects. Magariños was a serious mistake. They played at mutual wear and tear and may have destroyed the trust of thousands of voters in the space to the left of the PSOE, whatever the name it adopts or the candidate who heads it.
Sumar and Podemos have organized a mess that is beyond their means, becoming the weak link in Spanish politics, which is striking for people who have read Lenin. Subjectivism was always a dominant trait in the old PCE. The possibility that both parties agree must be quarantined.
Sánchez’s maneuver also tries to massively attract the vote of that sector in a toss-up election. In 2008, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero left Izquierda Unida with two deputies.
