MADRID — Before Sunday’s election in Spain, politicians had exchanged dire warnings over whether the country would break apart if the left won, or return to the dark days of Franco’s authoritarianism if the right did.
Voters responded to the politics of fear with one of their highest turnouts since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s — 76 percent — mostly to confirm their attachment to a left-wing social agenda and to the country’s regional diversity.
The vote also gave Vox, an anti-immigration party, its first seats in Parliament — the crossing of a significant threshold for Spain, a country in which nationalism was long stigmatized by the legacy of the Franco dictatorship.
Vox’s national debut showed that Spain was not immune to the advance of far-right parties that have made inroads elsewhere in Europe. But the emergence of Vox did as much or more to mobilize its opponents on the moderate left.
Over all, the result was one that was likely to hearten defenders of center-left solutions to the challenges of unsettling global times. If not the beginnings of a backlash against the populist far right — though it may be — then the result seemed at least to be a fortifying of defenses.
It was the kind of turnout that Democrats in the United States might hope for in 2020 or, more immediately, that defenders of the European Union, such as President Emmanuel Macron of France, are seeking in elections in May for the European Parliament, where much the same big stakes are in play.
None of that is to say that the forces of political fragmentation that have bedeviled Spain’s politics, and those elsewhere in Europe and the United States, are over. If anything, Spanish politics splintered further, just four years after the collapse of the country’s two-party system.
But even the highly polarized result confirmed Spain as one of the last bastions of socialism in Europe, at a time when center-left parties have all but collapsed in countries including France, Germany and Italy.
“In a Europe now dominated by center-right governments that seem to live in fear of the far right or in the hands of the far right, Spain stands out instead as a fortress for social democracy,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, the head of the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
“Everything in the campaign seemed to push Spanish voters toward the extremes, but they mostly responded by voting for the more moderate center,” he said.
Vox’s proposals, which included abolishing the autonomous administrations in Spain’s regions, lit a fire under left-wing voters, but they also seemed to galvanize smaller regional and nationalist parties, which made significant gains on Sunday.
Fear of Vox, as well as concerns about a traditional, conservative Popular Party willing to embrace the far-right party as its coalition partner, “filled the ballot boxes against racism, sexism, fascism and this vision of a Spain in which only a few can fit in,” wrote Ignacio Escolar, the editor in chief of eldiario.es, an online publication.
The results gave the Socialists 123 of the 350 seats in a splintered Parliament. While the Socialists fell short of a majority, they had almost double the number of seats of their main opponents, the Popular Party, whose support was cut in half. The center-right party’s showing was the worst in its history.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, will now have different options to form another coalition, most probably including the far-left Unidas Podemos, whose leader, Pablo Iglesias, also welcomed “the brake on the far right” delivered by voters.
Mr. Sánchez called the snap election in February after suffering a humiliating defeat in Parliament, when his national budget was rejected.
But the election also took place amid a continuing territorial conflict in the northeastern region of Catalonia and a landmark trial of separatist politicians from the region who were charged with rebellion and other crimes during a botched attempt to secede unilaterally in 2017.
On Sunday, Esquerra Republicana, a pro-independence party, became the biggest representative of Catalonia in the Spanish Parliament, rising to 15 seats, from nine in the last election in 2016. Esquerra’s leader, Oriol Junqueras, is among the jailed politicians who are on trial before the Spanish Supreme Court.
Mr. Sánchez will be hoping to avoid another uncomfortable Catalan alliance in the complicated coalition-building negotiations to come. But few analysts expect Spain to be plunged into another period of political limbo, similar to 2016, when politicians squabbled over who should govern after two inconclusive elections.
Mr. Sánchez’s personal legitimacy was also considerably reinforced on Sunday, after 10 months spent in office under pressure from his unwieldy coalition partners. He has also faced accusations from his right-wing opponents that he was a usurper because he unexpectedly gained power last June in a vote in Parliament, rather than through the ballot box.
Potentially deepening the left-wing surge, in neighboring Portugal, another socialist leader, Prime Minister António Costa, is hoping to win another mandate in elections in October.
“The good news for the European Union, particularly in the midst of Brexit, is that Spain now has a reinforced socialist leader who can help draw a clear axis across the Continent — running from Lisbon through Madrid and Paris to Berlin — of governments committed to more European integration,” said Pablo Simón, a professor of politics at the University Carlos III in Madrid.
“The flip side is that the election has shown the exceptionalism of the Iberian Peninsula, where the socialists can still mobilize voters much more effectively than in other countries,” Mr. Simón added.
Mr. Sánchez is expected to wait until May 26 before forming his government. On that date, Spaniards vote again in municipal and regional elections, as well as those for the European Parliament.
The outcome could help Mr. Sánchez decide whether to push ahead with a minority government, or even call another national election to seek a Socialist majority.
If his results strengthen in those elections next month, Mr. Sánchez, as well as his Catalan former allies, “might be comfortable with the idea of fresh elections,” wrote Federico Santi, an analyst at Eurasia Group, in a note on Monday.
Carmen Calvo, the deputy prime minister, told Cadena Ser, a radio station, on Monday that her Socialist party would probably try to govern on its own, with the tacit support of Unidas Podemos.
She poured cold water on the idea of renewing negotiations with Ciudadanos, which, like the Popular Party, also tilted further right in the elections, in part to protect its flank against Vox and also to continue to lead the fight against Catalan secessionism. The Ciudadanos party responded by saying it would not endorse Mr. Sánchez.
Before Sunday’s election, the Popular Party’s recently elected leader, Pablo Casado, unsuccessfully sought to persuade Vox not to field candidates in thinly populated regions, to avoid handing more seats to the Socialists.
Instead, the right divided itself, bitterly.
After the vote, Mr. Casado and Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, blamed each other for failing to unseat the Socialists. Vox won 10.3 percent of the votes, slightly below its result in regional elections in Andalusia in December.
“Nobody should underestimate the significance of Vox, but it won’t for now have the influence on government of some other far-right parties across Europe,” Mr. Torreblanca, the analyst, said.
Source : Nytimes
