bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Reuters

Spain was trapped in a political gridlock on Monday after right-wing parties failed to clinch a decisive victory and no clear winner emerged from a national election, leaving pro-independence Catalan and Basque parties as potential kingmakers.
The results from Sunday’s vote left neither the left-wing nor right-wing blocs with an easy path to form a government.
A second election is a possible outcome.
The centre-right People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox won a combined 169 seats in parliament – short of the 176 seats needed for a majority and confounding poll predictions. The ruling Socialists (PSOE) and far-left Sumar won 153.

After winning the most seats, the PP will be given the first stab at trying to cobble together enough votes in parliament to win a prime-ministerial investiture vote.
But its alliance with the far-right Vox and tough stance on separatism will make it difficult to gain support from any other faction.
Spain’s ‘Ivory Lady’ tomb reveals women’s leadership role in ancient times
The results showed the deep divisions in Spanish society. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the elections in a gamble after his Socialist Party took a drubbing in local elections in May.
His political opponents highlighted his reliance on the regional separatist parties, saying this threatened the nation itself.
The PP however, had looked set to need an alliance with Vox to govern, an outcome that would have brought hardline nationalists into government for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship and Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
As it happened, the Socialists performed better than polls had predicted, helped by a last-minute gaffes by PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo.
Feijoo nonetheless claimed victory.
Sanchez’s Socialists have more options for forming a government but face potentially unpalatable demands from Catalan separatist parties. Those will include insistence on an independence referendum, triggering the kind of political chaos seen in 2017 when Catalonia last tried to break from Spain.

Sanchez could win over left-wing separatist party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), as he did to form a minority government in 2020. But he will likely also need the backing of the more hardline Junts, which has not supported Sanchez in the past four years.
The Catalan leader who is emerging as potential kingmaker is Junts party leader Carles Puigdemont, who living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since the failed independence bid.
“The PSOE is at the mercy of Puigdemont,” said Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Madrid office at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“Puigdemont or deadlock,” said the right-wing ABC newspaper.
Spain’s PM Pedro Sanchez apologises to victims of sexual consent law
Centre-right Junts has not conveyed a clear position. Its candidate for Congress, Miriam Nogueras, said any backing would be in return for a new independence referendum and investment guarantees. The Socialists oppose independence and any vote on the issue.
The seats of Basque parties are also likely to come into play.
“After the election, we have a very, very difficult parliamentary arithmetics, but it seems our votes will be once again decisive,” Andoni Ortuzar, leader of moderate nationalist Basque party PNV, said on Sunday night. PNV secured five seats in the lower house.
“If it depends on us, ‘no pasaran’,” said Arnaldo Otegi, the head of Basque separatist EH Bildu party, using a civil war-era Republican slogan, meaning “they shall not pass”, in reference to PP and Vox. His party got six seats.
The likely slim margin of an investiture vote means even the single seat obtained by other regionalist groupa – from Canary Islands, northwestern Galicia and northeastern Navarra – could turn decisive.
Speaking to jubilant supporters outside the PSOE’s central Madrid headquarters late on Sunday, Sanchez said Spaniards had rejected the “backward-looking bloc, which proposed a total repeal of all the progress we have made over the last four years”.
In a more muted address at the PP headquarters across town, Feijoo insisted his party had won the election and would seek to avoid uncertainty by speaking to all willing parties to form a government. Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Sanchez could block any attempt by the right to form a government.
The law does not set a deadline for the process but if no candidate secures a majority within two months of the first vote on the prime minister, new elections must be held.


Free trade or fortress Europe? The battle for the soul of the EU economy

Fatal floods strike Spain and Portugal, thousands evacuating

Who is Spanish Minions figure skater, Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté?

EU finds TikTok ‘addictive’ in digital law probe, 6% fine looms for ByteDance

Spain

Spain in stalemate after right fails to win predicted majority in election

Spain may be facing weeks, even months of political gridlock and possibly a new election. Photo: Reuters

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has denied his right-wing opponents a majority in parliament. Photo: AP

Spain’s opposition People’s Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo. Photo: Reuters

A polling station in Ronda, Spain. Photo: Reuters

Spain voting begins in election that could see another EU country swing to the right

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party has called an early election, which could see a right-wing coalition come to power. File photo: AP

A man carrying an umbrella for the beach casts his ballot at a polling station in Badalona on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday. Photo: AP

Voters use their ballots to relieve the heat at a polling station in Spain on Sunday. Photo: AP

Santiago Abascal, the Vox candidate to lead Spain, greets supporters at a polling station. His party, and other rightwing groups, say Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has ruined the country. Photo: dpa

UK by-elections: Sunak’s Conservatives retain ex-PM Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge seat but lose 2 key constituencies

Ballots are counted at Queensmead Sports Centre in South Ruislip, west London, on July 20. Photo: PA via AP

A voter exits a polling station in Uxbridge, west London, on July 20. Photo: EPA-EFE

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Photo: Reuters

Conservative candidate Steve Tuckwell won the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Photo: PA via AP

Dutch prime minister resigns after ruling coalition fails to agree on migration policy

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte  in The Hague, Netherlands on Friday. Photo: AFP

Dutch Minister of Defence Kajsa Ollongren arrives at the Binnenhof in The Hague, Netherlands on Friday after the collapse of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s coalition government. Photo: ANP / AFP

Dutch Minister of Finance Sigrid Kaag, left, arrives at General Affairs Ministry in The Hague, Netherlands on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

UK defence minister Wallace to step down as MP at next election

British defence secretary Ben Wallace in Singapore on June 2. Photo: Reuters

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, left, and UK defence secretary Ben Wallace. Photo: Bloomberg

News

World

Europe

Despite polls predicting victory for Spain’s right-wing Popular Party, Sunday’s election resulted in a hung parliament
Closer-than-expected outcome likely to produce weeks of political jockeying and uncertainty over Spain’s future leadership


Spain was trapped in a political gridlock after right-wing parties failed to clinch a decisive victory and no clear winner emerged from a national election.


European Union