Spain’s general elections took place on 20th December and as they were very close to the Christmas holidays, many Spanish who live abroad had an opportunity to vote directly in Spain without the problems and inconvenience of voting through an embassy.
The weeks before the election were very controversial with all party leaders attacking each other’s ideas instead of defending their own.
Even one week before the elections, the current Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy (presidente del Gobierno) was attacked in his own city by a seventeen year old teenager.
Traditionally Spanish politics has been focussed around two parties: Partido Popular (PP), a conservative party who are currently in power and Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), a socialist party who were previously in government for 22 years of the 37 years of democracy in Spain.
Bear in mind that Spain had a dictator for more than 35 years under Franco (1939-1975).
See graphics of last results of elections in Spain:
2011 2007
There were other parties in this election such us IU, UPyD, PNV (basque party) CIU and ERC (catalan parties), BNG (Galician party), PA (Andalusian party), CA (Canarian party) but together they failed to achieve more than 25% of the total vote.
However this election was different: Two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, were fighting to finish with “bipartidismo” (the Spanish word use to define that only two parties have most of parliamentarians in Spanish Parliament). Both were the result of many years of alleged corruption and political scandals by PP and PSOE.
Podemos was a result of the anti-austerity movement (15-M) that took place in 2011 against the politicians in charge and Ciudadanos. They were originally a Catalan party and they convinced many voters to finish with “bipartidismo” and adopt more liberal ideas.
The result of the election was as expected with a rise in popularity for the two new parties and a big loss of votes for PP and PSOE.
PP lost their absolute majority of 28% of total of votes in 2015 compared with 44% in 2011.
In 2011 PP and PSOE shared 75% of votes compared to less than 50% in 2015 with Podemos and Ciudadanos getting 33% of votes together. See below graphic of the results:
“Escaños” means the number of seats in Parliament:
PP: 123 escaños
PSOE: 90 escaños
Podemos: 69 escaños
Ciudadanos: 40 escaños.
The 20 December election has resulted in a very difficult coalition government with all 4 parties unwilling to negotiate over very different ideas.
After many years and scandals of ‘bipartidismo’ politics, Podemos and Ciudadanos do not want a coalition with PP and PSOE, so it looks like Spain may see further elections in the coming months.
