Surprise in the Gaunas. Surprise in Madrid DF. Surprise throughout Spain. Surprise in Europe. Pedro Sánchez manages to resist the slap of May 28 and the majority of Spanish society, with the decisive contribution of Catalan voters, says no to the shock wave of the extreme right, increasingly powerful in the European Union since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Spain stops the Meloni wave, the Orban wave, the Morawiecki wave, the alliance of the right with the extreme right, but it has not finished manufacturing a stable governance formula. Alberto Núñez Feijóo wins without numbers to govern. Nothing can do with Vox. He can only offer a national agreement formula to the PSOE.
Sánchez resisted, but his investiture could be blocked by the man from Waterloo, Carles Puigdemont. All the actors and ingredients of the effervescent Spanish politics have recombined in a very surprising way at the end of July. The possibility of an electoral repetition opens up.
With 100% of the vote counted, the Popular Party won the elections with 32.9% of the votes cast and 136 deputies, a figure far removed from the forecast of the majority of the polls published in Spain during the first half of July, at a rate of six polls per day, a figure never seen in any other European country.
The PSOE, the old party that for so many years has acted as a link between the state apparatus and the Spanish popular classes, has managed to face the demographic consensus that presented it dismasted after the failure of May 28.
The Socialist Party has touched 32% of the votes, obtaining 122 deputies, two more than in the last general elections (November 2019). That 32% was only forecast by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS). The veteran sociologist José Félix Tezanos, always at the center of controversy, was not wrong. Yesterday morning, in conversation with La Vanguardia, Tezanos remained convinced that the PSOE would reach 32%, with the possibility of winning. This has been about to happen. The Popular Party has finally managed to get a point ahead. A single point and 14 more deputies.
This equation between popular and socialists swings especially on the vote in Catalonia, where the PSC has achieved a spectacular result, with an advantage of thirteen seats over the Popular Party, overwhelming the Republican Left and Junts per Catalunya, pro-independence formations that are for the first time, each of them, below half a million votes. The results of PSC and Sumar in Catalonia – between them they obtained 26 deputies out of a total of 48 – recall the triumph of the Catalan left in the first democratic elections on June 15, 1977.
Adding has worked. Politically it has worked. It obtained 31 deputies, four less than Unidas Podemos in the previous legislature, seven less if we consider the three deputies obtained in 2019 by Más País and Compromís, organizations that today are part of the platform led by Yolanda Díaz. Above 30 deputies, Sumar can enter the consolidation phase. It’s not a failure on July 23. It was a failure to contribute to the dismantling of the political space of UP on the eve of the important municipal and regional elections on May 28.
The majority vote of Catalan society, concentrated this time on the two left formations, has contributed decisively to stopping the alliance of the right with the extreme right, but the downward vote of a part of the Catalan independence movement can now block Sánchez. Catalonia, solution and problem. Here is a historical constant.
We could say that Carles Puigdemont now has the key to the Spanish political situation – the man from Waterloo had been waiting for this moment for some time – but the electoral mandate of Catalan society is, on the other hand, unequivocal.
A repetition of the elections cannot be ruled out if Puigdemont chooses to block Sánchez’s investiture, joining Vox and PP. Politically complex days are coming, especially for the Popular Party and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who have clearly fallen short of the expectations created. Feijóo last night claimed his right to form a government, as the winner of the elections in number of seats and by a narrow margin of votes.
To the extent that Vox’s support is incompatible with the contest of the Basque Nationalist Party – which lost primacy over Bildu yesterday – this minority government could only survive with the constant help of the Socialist Party. There will be no shortage of proposals in the coming hours and days for a formula for national agreement to be negotiated between the two major parties. Very interesting days are coming. Yesterday on the balcony of Genoa everyone wore white, except the lady in red: Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Failure of private surveys. Failure of media pressure. Insufficient victory of the PP. Vox throwback. Decisive Catalan vote in favor of the left. Key for Puigdemont. Today defibrillators will be distributed in Madrid DF.
