Politico: Sánchez loses bid to be reelected Spanish PM

Spanish lawmakers on Thursday voted down Pedro Sánchez’s bid to be reelected as prime minister — triggering the countdown for a new election to be held in November if the Socialist leader doesn’t manage to assemble a majority within two months.

Sánchez — whose party came first in a general election in April with 29 percent of the vote but fell short of a ruling majority — had been negotiating a potential coalition deal with the far-left Podemos. But the two sides failed to reach an agreement and accused each other of blowing up the talks in a parliamentary session that turned into a blame game. [...]

Ciudadanos head Albert Rivera used the word “gang” to refer to Sánchez’s potential allies among the far-left and regional nationalists, and argued that “the gang just couldn’t agree on how to share the lot.” [...]

It took close to three months after the April 28 ballot for the Socialists and Podemos to start talks, which took place against a backdrop of mutual mistrust, threats and ultimatums aired in media, and leaks of both parties’ negotiating positions.

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Politico: Spain’s Sánchez waiting game

On Thursday, Sánchez was tasked by King Felipe VI with forming a government, a formality that recognizes him as official candidate for prime minister. But when the Socialist leader later addressed reporters at La Moncloa, the Spanish government headquarters, he didn’t add much to what has been obvious to any informed observer since the April 28 ballot. [...]

José Manuel García-Margallo, an MEP for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and a former foreign minister, said Sánchez had “a clear horizon ahead,” adding that the seat distribution in parliament gave him several options: setting up a minority government; wooing the liberal Ciudadanos for a coalition; or forming a multi-party alliance with the leftist Podemos, the Basque Nationalist Party and other minor regional parties. [...]

Sánchez invited the three main political parties beside his Socialists — the PP, Ciudadanos and Podemos — to a series of meetings next week, suggesting that he sees the support of these four parties as crucial to his reelection. That means he is likely seeking not just the support of Podemos, but also some form of cooperation with Ciudadanos or the PP, such as an agreement that one or both of the two parties would abstain in the investiture vote. [...]

As well as the general election in April, Spain held local, regional and European ballots in May and is awaiting the election of mayors of over 8,000 towns and cities and the presidents of 12 regions. Sánchez’s Socialists won the election by a wide margin, but which party rules in many regions and cities will depend on coalition negotiations.

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Jacobin Magazine: Power Has Returned to Power

On April 29, as Spaniards woke up the day after the general election, it was the Right that was left wondering what might have been. The right-wing Partido Popular (PP) had achieved its worst ever score, and the far-right Vox’s breakthrough was less than expected. For the conservative FAES — the country’s most influential think tank — the blame for the right-wing parties’ poor results lay with the division of their forces combined with voters’ “reckless ignorance.” Federico Jiménez Losantos, a hard-right radio host, declared Spain “lost, stupefied, and idiotic.” [...]

We should not underestimate the scale of this defeat. Five years after its triumphal breakthrough in the 2014 EU elections, Podemos has suffered a resounding defeat, losing almost all of the key municipalities it won with grassroots coalitions in 2015. The exceptions are Cádiz — whose anticapitalist mayor, Kichi, won an impressive absolute majority — and Valencia, still governed by a leftist coalition, but where Podemos has failed to secure a municipal foothold. [...]

More broadly, we can today characterize the current situation in Spain as governed by a stabilization of the center after years of popular revolt. Indeed, for all its threatening appearance, even the emergence of the radical right Vox has facilitated this process. Failing to make a breakthrough in this weekend’s election, it appears to have hardened as a small party that appeals only to wealthy Spaniards and members of the armed forces. It is enough to propel the conservative PP to regional and local power, but also serves PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez as a convenient boogeyman. As he forms a national-level government may now be tempted to draw the liberal Ciudadanos away from a right-wing coalition and toward a large, centrist alliance. [...]

Sánchez, however, is under no hurry to invite Podemos into the government — even less so after Sunday’s results. In previous televised debates, he refused to clarify, when pressured by Iglesias, whether he would seek Ciudadanos’s support. It fell upon Rivera to insist that his party would rather join forces with the radical right. But Rivera has broken his word before, and he has a proved talent for overnight ideological conversion. In four different regions, Ciudadanos’s support could prove instrumental for PSOE to hold power. One of them is Madrid, without which the PP would lose its last remaining stronghold.

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The Guardian: Fear of the far right and the collapse of Podemos gave Spain’s socialists victory

Sánchez’s victory is the result of two main trends. First and foremost is the rise of Vox, a new, openly misogynistic and xenophobic party that toys with nostalgia for Franco’s dictatorship. Backed by the likes of Steve Bannon, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, and indirectly financed (via the Madrid-based CitizenGo organisation) by a US super PAC with ties to Donald Trump, Russian oligarch Aleksei Komov and the Italian MP Luca Volontè, who is accused of bribery, Vox rode a wave of anti-Catalan sentiment into the government of Andalucía in December. Sunday’s massive turnout (75.8%) was most likely driven by widespread fear of a rightwing coalition government that would include it.

The second trend that explains Sánchez’s staggering victory is the decline of Unidas Podemos, the radical-left party that emerged in the wake of the anti-austerity indignados movement. Though the party initially promised to implement a progressively participatory new style of politics, over time its leadership has adopted a more traditional top-down approach that has been overly reliant on individual personalities. It lacked proper channels for democratic deliberation, so internal dissent most often took the form of high-profile desertions, such as that of former party leader Íñigo Errejón. It was also recently revealed that a group of police officers have been accused of conducting a smear campaign against the party, with help from government officials. Much was made, too, about the purchase of a pricey chalet by party leaders Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero, which was depicted in the media as a betrayal of the couple’s leftist ideals. [...]

Towards this end, Podemos could take some cues from the leftwing councils currently governing most of Spain’s major cities, including Madrid and Barcelona. Though not without significant shortcomings, these councils have made citizen participation a crucial part of their brand by organising citizen consultations and participatory budgets. On the other hand, a more radical approach to participation would involve opening the party up to more meaningful forms of deliberation and participation. Over recent years, Podemos’s failure to do so has come off as a disavowal of its initial promise. This is most disheartening because it leaves the impression that a new approach to politics simply isn’t possible. And when the new seems impossible, people are tempted to go back to the old ways or, worse, to embrace the destructive, authoritarian political nihilism of the far right.

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Politico: The battle for Spain’s empty center

Sánchez has good reason to be focusing on the interior. Polls predict that the Socialists will replace the Popular Party (PP) as the biggest party in a majority of inland provinces. But it's not because rural voters are flocking to the Socialists; it's because the far-right Vox party and the liberal Ciudadanos are taking votes away from the PP. [...]

Spain is divided into 52 electoral districts, and the rural areas are valuable. The 28 most sparsely populated constituencies have just 20 percent of the population but 30 percent of the seats in parliament — 103 out of 350. On top of that, the electoral system becomes less proportional in these areas because of the reduced number of seats per district, giving the winning party a bonus.

In 2016, the PP won 40 percent of the vote in rural districts and 51 percent of the seats. A poll of polls for El País forecasts the conservatives will lose almost half their seats in those constituencies, while the Socialists will grow from 29 to 48. [...]

Ciudadanos unveiled a plan to cut personal income tax by 60 percent and bring fast internet to underpopulated areas. The PP has defended its rural track record and its role negotiating the CAP in Brussels. The far right has focused on defending hunting, fishing and bullfighting. The far-left Podemos, which risks losing all its current 15 lawmakers in the least populated provinces, has promised better social services and infrastructure.

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Jacobin Magazine: Spain’s Troubled Spring

Today, Sánchez’s government is at the end of the line. And again the issue at the center of Spanish politics is the national question. With Spanish nationalists on the rise and the Catalan and Basque independentists withdrawing support for Sánchez’s budget, fresh elections are now set for April 28. The result of the campaign is uncertain. But things are not looking promising for the forces of social transformation. With the Catalan independentists lacking a strategy for a way forward, the Left is once again buried in in-fighting. [...]

Vox’s breakthrough and the rise of Ciudadanos (with the PP also holding firm) meant that there were enough right-wing MPs to hand the presidency of the Andalucían region to the PP for the first time. This union of the three right-wing forces is key to the reconstruction of the political camp so dear to former conservative premier José María Aznar; the absolute majority he won in 2000 may indeed repeat itself in the April 28 contest. Though they act separately, these forces today make up a three-headed beast, with the conservative soul of the PP in concert with the liberal soul of Ciudadanos and the ultra-right Vox.

Such are the forces of Spanish nationalism. Yet from the outset the Catalan independentists had been decisive in getting Sánchez into office. They unconditionally backed his bid to oust Rajoy in June 2018, in the hope that a PSOE government would make gestures toward dialogue with the Catalan autonomous government and some kind of solution for the Catalan political prisoners. This contrasted with the right-wing Basque nationalists of the PNV, who played their hand best, selling support for Sánchez in exchange for greater economic powers for the Basque Autonomous Community. [...]

With this question we get to the most tangled knot in the current situation. The PSOE can hope to bind the left-wing electorate behind itself on the basis of two main developments, namely the fragmentation of Unidos Podemos (with divisions at the regional level, but especially the bad image resulting from Iñigo Errejón and Manuela Carmena’s plan to stand separately of the party in the Madrid local elections) and the danger represented by the far-right Vox, which the polls predict to be on the brink of a historic breakthrough. Calling the elections so soon will leave all of its right-wing rivals relatively unprepared, and also exploit a moment in which Unidos Podemos is internally divided and lacks a strategic perspective.

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UnHerd: What snapped in Spain?

Spain was due to hold a general election next year anyway, but it was always more likely than not that the PSOE would be forced to go to the polls before then. The party ousted the scandal-hit Rajoy government in a parliamentary vote of no confidence that won the backing of 180 MPs back in 2018. The vote followed a ruling by Spain’s highest criminal court that the PP had profited from illegal kickbacks from government contracts. Yet the anti-Rajoy alliance – which Sanchez himself described at one point as the “Frankenstein coalition” – crumbled soon after the PP had been deposed.[...]

In a country that had grown tired of the financial scandals surrounding the governing PP, Sanchez’s ruthless action in toppling Rajoy proved popular. As such, the PSOE currently sit at around 24% in the polls – granted a modest improvement on the 22% it was polling at prior to Rajoy’s departure, but nonetheless the largest share for any single party. [...]

Support for Podemos has almost halved in the polls from a high of 27% in December 2014 to 15% today, putting them in fourth place, and only four points ahead of Vox, a party of the hard Right. The steady decline of Podemos – in part the victim of that familiar curse of Left-wing political parties, the factional squabble – offers Sanchez breathing space on his Left. [...]

Only a fool would write off ‘Mr Handsome’ – as Pedro Sánchez is nicknamed. Like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Sanchez has been written-off many times in the past by establishment politicians and commentators only to re-emerge ahead of the pack. After almost a decade of austerity, fatigued voters may yet throw a spoke in the wheel of Spanish politics and return the Prime Minister who promised more money.

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Jacobin Magazine: A Darkening Horizon

Much of the analysis of Andalusia’s swing to the right has focused on increased nationalist sentiment in the wake of last year’s Catalan independence crisis. During the Andalusian campaign the two major right-wing forces, the Popular Party (PP) and Ciudadanos (C’s, Citizens), not only stressed the ongoing threat to Spanish territorial unity but also sought to equate a vote for the PSOE with backing for regional “separatists.” Indeed, it kicked off with the PP’s new hard-right leader Pablo Casado accusing PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez of being a “golpista” or coup-plotter because of his dependence on Catalan parties for his parliamentary majority.

Such rhetoric played well among conservative voters, and was indicative of an increasingly radicalized Spanish right. Yet probably decisive in securing their electoral majority was a historic abstention among left-wing voters. If the combined support of the right-wing bloc increased by 275,000 votes in comparison with the 2015 elections, this cannot fully account for the 700,000 lost votes between the PSOE and the Podemos–United Left coalition, Adelante Andalucía. As the United Left (IU) leader Alberto Garzón stressed, the reactionary bloc’s electoral weight “would not have been so great except for demobilization in working-class neighborhoods.” [...]

The results in the Andalusian contest also show how this intense competition is reshaping the balance of forces on the Spanish right. Aside from Vox’s historic twelve-seat breakthrough in the regional parliament, Ciudadanos won twenty-one seats — more than doubling its previous total of nine — while the PP lost seven seats even as it finished second overall, behind the PSOE. The viable governing options on the table will either be an unholy trinity of the PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox or a center-right coalition of the PP, PSOE, and Ciudadanos. [...]

This is where Vox comes in. Through some clever marketing – like staging its party conference at Vistalegre, where Podemos held its own famously heated congresses — Vox has effectively worked itself into the space of the “new right” and the “anti-left.” They are the most explicitly anti-independentist, anti-Podemos, anti-left party in Spain, with discourse steeped in openly anti-feminist and anti-LGBT rhetoric. The party did not have any specific program or initiatives for Andalusia as part of its electoral campaign, but it still managed to make the dramatic breakthrough it did.

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Politico: Spanish right eyes deep south

While there is plenty at stake for all four main Spanish parties in an election in Andalusia on December 2, the one that stands to gain the most is Ciudadanos. It enters this contest not only hoping to unseat the Socialists (PSOE), who have governed Andalusia for nearly 40 years, but also determined to assert its dominance in Spain’s increasingly crowded political right.[...]

Since 2015, the Socialists have relied on the support of Ciudadanos to govern in Andalusia. But the recent collapse of that partnership reflects Ciudadanos’ shift to the right and its push to make inroads in the region. Originally claiming to occupy the center ground, in early 2017 the party eliminated “social democracy” from its statutes, relaunching itself as a “constitutionalist, liberal, democratic and progressive” force.[...]

That radicalization has been most visible on the issue of Catalonia. Founded as a Catalan centrist party that sought to counter that region’s swelling nationalism, Ciudadanos, which went nationwide in 2014, has hardened its unionist stance as Spain’s territorial crisis has unfolded.[...]

That is unlikely, with the Socialists almost certainly heading for victory once again, albeit requiring a new partner to help them govern. A more realistic target for Ciudadanos will be to overtake the PP, which it is happy to join forces with to form a government if the two parties gain enough seats.

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UnHerd: Could Spain’s Pedro Sánchez save Europe’s centre-Left?

Down but not out, Sánchez subsequently toured the country in his beaten-up Peugeot, meeting with grassroots PSOE members and drumming up support. Like Corbyn – and in contrast to figures from the political centre – Sánchez draws his support predominantly from the grassroots. As a result of reaching out to Socialist Party activists he was easily re-elected as party leader in June 2017. A year later he became the first politician in Spain’s history to unseat a prime minister through a no-confidence motion. [...]

Sánchez’s ruthlessness in deposing the stale and corrupt Rajoy government changed that. A poll taken shortly after Rajoy’s departure had the PSOE on 28.8% of the vote, ahead of the PP on 25.6% and Ciudadanos on 21.1%. Support for the PSOE’s Left-wing rivals Podemos also fell, slipping to 13.1% – less than half of what the insurgent party were polling three years earlier. [...]

Sánchez is therefore under huge pressure to call an election. He had initially promised to do so – a move calculated to win support from other parties during the no confidence vote against Rajoy. Yet since becoming Prime Minister he has done a swift about-turn, announcing recently that he would stay on until his mandate expires in 2020 so as to “normalise” the country.  [...]

The biggest sticking point for the new government, however, will be in delivering a budget that moves Spain firmly away from austerity. This week Sánchez agreed a deal with Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos. The deal proposes a raft of Left-wing measures for next year’s budget, including a 22% increase in the minimum wage, heavy investment in education, longer paternity leave and higher spening on benefit payments. The deal seeks to avoid an early general election, which benefits both men: if one were held, Podemos would likely do poorly and there is no guarantee the PSOE would win a majority.

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Spiegel: 'I Don't Like Being in Exile'

Puigdemont: Unfortunately, it is indeed different in Spain. The Spanish legal system has more weaknesses. If we Catalans want to split from Spain, it's because of the 1978 Constitution. For example, the judge who will decide on my appeals used to be a senator in the conservative People's Party. How can he be trusted? We can turn to the European Court of Justice, but that would leave many people languishing in jail for years before any ruling in their favor on the grounds that Spain has violated their fundamental rights. [...]

Puigdemont: It wasn't only my doing. It was a combination of two factors: The fact that the people mobilized, and the new communication platforms. What would have had to happen in secret just a few decades ago can now be shared all over the world. When I was in Helsinki, just before I was arrested in Germany in March, I said: We want a society in which the smartphone is more powerful than the sword. [...]

Puigdemont: That doesn't surprise me. I always warned that no one would recognize an independent Catalan state. I have criticized the EU for failing to make an official statement on what position it would take on an independent Catalonia. But above all, as a European citizen, I was deeply disappointed by the silence after the police violence on the day of the referendum. [...]

Puigdemont: We never talk in terms of nationalism, but of sovereignty. What is happening in Catalonia is not a traditional, nationalist struggle for independence. If our aim were to create a nation-state, we would have tried to do so earlier. Nationalism is a danger to Europe.

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Jacobin Magazine: Flowers at the Tomb of a Fascist

The dictator chose the site during a hike in the Sierra with General Juan Moscardó. Its proximity to El Escorial monastery, the historic resting place of Spanish kings, was no accident. Franco had hoped that work on the project would be finished by April 1, 1941, the anniversary of his victory in the civil war, but the paid labor provided by construction companies San Román, Huarte (now OHL), and Banús could not complete it in time. As a solution, the “Redemption through Labour” scheme deployed republican prisoners as slaves on the construction project. With their involvement the complex was finally finished in 1958, after a more than seventeen-year delay.

Now Spain’s new Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is seeking to end the basilica being used as an apologia for the Spanish genocide. His Socialist Party (PSOE) government has promised to remove both the remains of Franco and those of the 1930s Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera before the end of the summer. The idea is turn the complex into a site of historical memory and reconciliation. Since the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, the PSOE has spent more than twenty years in power without daring to pull down this symbol of the fascist triumph. The speed of their announcement has surprised many, coming less than a month after taking office, but it seems designed to take advantage of the current weakness of the right-wing Popular Party (PP) after the fall of Mariano Rajoy. Founded by seven Francoist ministers, the PP are the political heirs to the dictatorial regime and have repeatedly obstructed attempts to gain justice for victims of his regime. [...]

As I approach Franco’s tomb an assemblage of fresh flowers lies on top. Those nostalgic for the days of fascism crowd around the grave, mixing with the tourists. A Japanese group visiting the abbey concentrate on the frescos in the cupula, ignoring the vigil at the grave of a dictator. But then an older man beside Franco’s marble tablet breaks the mirage, giving a military heel followed by a fascist salute. It encourages another man, who kneels and begins to pray beside the grave, then stands up and raises his hand to the sky. He remains standing for a few seconds, then bends to kiss Franco’s name carved in stone. Throughout this scene, the volunteer responsible simply repeats to the visitors that no photographs are allowed. I sit down on the ground in a corner, trying to gather my thoughts and write a few lines. The volunteer rebukes me, “Have some respect,” and tells me I can’t write here. Everything in this aberration is a metaphor for Spain.

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LSE Blog: Rajoy Loses Power In Spain: What Happens Now?

In some ways, Spain’s problems closely resemble those of Italy’s. In both countries, public disgust with a corrupt elite combined with the financial crisis to bring about a partial collapse of the mainstream centre-right and centre-left, and facilitated the rise of new anti-elite challengers. In Spain, the conservative People’s Party (Partido Popular – PP) and the centre-left Socialists (Partido Socialista Obrero Español – PSOE) have had to contend with the left-populist Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos, which somewhat resembles Macron’s La Republique En Marche in France. The PP and PSOE declined to record lows of support in the December 2015 elections; the PP recovered slightly in June 2016’s repeat polls and formed a minority government. However, the PP’s position was very weak; Rajoy only won office with Ciudadanos support, and even then relied on the Socialists abstaining, a decision that nearly tore that party apart and briefly cost Sánchez his job as leader. [...]

Sánchez won office by exploiting a confluence of events that benefited his party. Firstly, although both of Spain’s legacy parties have been touched by accusations of corruption, the Socialists’ most notable scandal erupted in Andalusia, home of Sánchez’s chief internal rival, Susana Díaz. Meanwhile, the PP’s scandals have tended to receive more coverage in recent months. First, there was the discovery that the president of Madrid’s regional government, Cristina Cifuentes, had fraudulently obtained a master’s degree, and had been caught trying to shoplift. Then came the handing down of verdicts in the long-running Caso Gürtel. This years-old investigation looked at the illegal financing of the PP, and on 24 May, the Audiencia Nacional sentenced its ex-treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, to 33 years in prison. It also convicted Rajoy’s former health minister, Ana Mato, and found the PP itself guilty, fining the party €245,000. It was the Gürtel ruling that gave Sánchez his opening to introduce a motion of no confidence.  [...]

Ciudadanos, on the other hand, has been leading recent polls, well ahead of the PP, its rival on the centre-right. The party draws votes from both the PP and the PSOE, has strong anti-corruption credentials and is perhaps the most adamantly centralist party in Spanish politics – that is, it tends to oppose concessions to Catalan or Basque nationalism. The Catalan crisis has thus helped its support to grow. Although Ciudadanos has worked with the Socialists before, the party had been backing Rajoy since his re-election in 2016. In this case, it decided not to back Sánchez, instead claiming to want snap elections (rather disingenuously, since it had agreed to support Rajoy’s proposed budget). Most likely, Rivera did not wish to be seen voting alongside Podemos, or worse yet, Catalan nationalists.  

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Politico: 5 takeaways from the overthrow of Mariano Rajoy

Sánchez managed to assemble an unlikely coalition — labeled “Frankenstein” by rivals — with the far-left Podemos, two Catalan pro-independence groups and a Basque nationalist party, all of who had refused to endorse the Socialist for the premiership in the past. [...]

It was a bitter way to go for Rajoy, the first Spanish prime minister to be taken down by a motion of no confidence. It was also an extraordinary vindication for Sánchez, whose chances of getting the top job had been dismissed by polls, rivals and analysts. [...]

It was a particularly unglamorous end. He was sacked because of corruption in his Popular Party, although the PM himself wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing in the courts. Rajoy didn’t even attend most of the marathon parliamentary session called to oust him. On Thursday afternoon, he and his aides went to a restaurant instead. On Friday morning, he arrived late to the Congress of Deputies. [...]

Sánchez didn’t give many hints as to what his government will do, but he vowed to honor Spain’s commitments to its European partners in terms of budget stability and to lead a firmly pro-European government. [...]

With Rajoy out, the more moderate elements of the Catalan separatist movement will have an opportunity to push for a softer approach with Madrid. Direct rule over Catalonia by the central government will be ended within hours and Sánchez has defended greater powers for the region and constitutional change, although he lacks the majority in parliament to amend the constitution.

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Politico: Spanish Socialist’s survival strategy

The Madrid-born Socialist leader is offering constitutional reform that would give Catalonia increased autonomy, but not independence. “The secessionists are going to meet the wall of Spain’s rule of law if they go back to the unilateral path (to independence),” he said.

The appointment last week of hard-line independence activist Quim Torra as Catalan regional president makes it even less likely that the crisis is going to cool off in the short term. At the same time, supporters of Spanish unity have discovered a propaganda goldmine in Torra’s anti-Spanish writings and tweets. [...]

The Socialists are currently the second-biggest party in parliament after Rajoy’s conservatives, with the far-left Podemos in third place and Ciudadanos fourth. But recent polls of voter intentions put Ciudadanos either in the lead or second while the PSOE is most often ranked third after Rajoy’s party and Rivera’s. [...]

While Ciudadanos has poached voters from the PP and the PSOE, it is a more natural fit for disenchanted conservatives than leftists. Sánchez argued that the “fracture” on the right, in the context of a more fragmented political scenario where votes are split four ways rather than the traditional two-way PP-PSOE rivalry, means he is in a good position to win the next national election.

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Politico: Spain’s hyperactive parliament stalls reform

The scant results, however, suggest all this hyperactivity is mucho ruido y pocas nueces (much ado about nothing). For Prime Minister Rajoy, who hailed the delayed approval of the 2017 budget as proof of his deal-making abilities within a fragile multiparty coalition, there remains the nagging doubt of whether he will be able to repeat the trick with this year’s budget. [...]

These parvenus — especially Podemos — are determined to strike down existing laws without proposing anything sensible in their place, he said. They call pointless plenary sessions, invite random experts to speak and deliver two-minute speeches tailor-made for Twitter. But their labor “has had no impact whatsoever on the lives of citizens.”  [...]

Rajoy’s conservatives control just 137 seats in the 350-seat chamber, with the Socialists on 85 seats, Podemos and its allies on 71, and Ciudadanos on 32. That means any of the four big parties wanting to pass a law now needs the support of either two other big players, or one of them plus regional parties (which have become a less reliable source of support thanks to the Catalan independence crisis). [...]

Of all of the 41 bills Congress has passed so far in Rajoy’s second term — including those proposed by the opposition and by the government — many were national translations of EU regulations or amendments to local laws mandated by EU court rulings. In contrast, the 63 bills approved at the same stage of his first mandate included key policies such as a labor reform that made it cheaper to fire workers.

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Politico: Spain brings up the bodies

El Valle de los Caídos — or the Valley of the Fallen — has stood largely untouched since a massive war monument was completed in 1959. The site is the resting place of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the leader of Falange, the far-right party that supported him. It is also one of Europe’s largest mass graves, housing the remains of 33,700 people killed in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. [...]

Thousands of families in recent years have tried to find and exhume loved ones who were killed during the war, or the ensuing years. The current campaign to exhume relatives from the Valley of the Fallen — led by seven separate families — is unusual for including the families of nationalist, not only republican, fighters. [...]

But in December 2007, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero introduced a “Law of Historical Memory” that sought to formally acknowledge the victims of the civil war and dictatorship, as well as their families, and paved the way for the removal of symbols of the regime.

Dozens of statues of Franco were removed from town squares and the names of streets dedicated to the Caudillo and his generals were changed. Many on the right saw the law as needlessly raking over the past. Yet the initiative failed to satisfy many on the left, who felt it was too timid.

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Jacobin Magazine: Podemos Under Pressure

In the rest of Spain a wave of nationalist sentiment has seen a clear shift to the right, with some polls showing the PP and Ciudadanos, the two main right-wing parties, winning an absolute majority if general elections were held today. Podemos, the only major Spanish party to vote against suspending Catalan autonomy, has found it difficult to operate in a climate dominated by the national question. Defending an alternative federal model for the country that would recognize the right to decide, they have repeatedly been painted as “traitors” and close allies of the independence movement by much of the Spanish media. [...]

It remains acute. The Catalan crisis is a fundamentally political one and cannot be resolved judicially or through the detention of political leaders. With the imposition of direct rule, Spain might have won as a state but it has failed as a nation. Indeed at the origin of this crisis is the historical failure to construct a form of political coexistence in Spain that could aggregate the national differences and political wills into a more universal imagined community. [...]

At the same time the pro-independence parties’ strategy based around a “process of disconnection” from the Spanish state has also failed. The idea that through a series of parliamentary declarations and one-off mobilizations Catalonia was going to secede from Spain underestimated both the coercive powers of the Spanish state and the lengths to which it would go to maintain Catalonia as part of its territory. The regional elections in December look likely to result in a further impasse. The pro-independence parties might maintain their slim majority of seats but they don’t, as yet, have the capacity to advance their historic objectives. [...]

It is true for a moment on October 1st the independence movement managed to overcome its own limitations, moving from an identitarian idea of the Catalans as “a people” to a democratic sense of “we the people”. The vote succeeded as a form of popular mobilization, incorporating many who didn’t support independence but believed in the right to decide. But it should not be understood as a referendum capable of giving the Catalan government a mandate for independence. And from the moment it was interpreted as such, the possibility of building upon this mobilization to construct a broader majoritarian bloc closed. [...]

Podemos needs to concentrate on strategic considerations, but at the same time we also clearly have to respond to the demand from much of Spanish society to get rid of the current government. In theory this would involve enabling the PSOE to govern in minority while we remained in opposition. But even this seems difficult right now as it would only be possible numerically with the support of Basque and Catalan nationalists. We have to acknowledge that the opening which the re-election of Pedro Sánchez represented has closed again.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Roots of Spanish Rage

While it is tempting to read ongoing events as an authoritarian lapse, this interpretation remains incomplete. More than a simple throwback to Spain’s past, the Catalan crisis presents an ominous vision for the future: one in which the reconfiguration of the state takes place along reactionary and punitive lines. Spanish nationalism has become a vehicle for this endeavor, galvanizing the right and presenting a critical challenge for left and progressive forces. But it is, by its nature, incapable of producing a stable political outcome. As long as symbols of national unity remain cudgels in the hands of the Spanish right, disarray will persist. [...]

Maurice Duverger once remarked that just as people are conditioned by their childhoods, political parties are defined by their origins. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP), which governs with support from the center-right Ciudadanos (C’s), owes its existence to Franco’s longtime information minister, Manuel Fraga. In the late sixties Fraga realized the regime could not outlive Franco, so he pressed its modernizing cadres to accept a democratic transition after the dictator’s death. With the dictatorship’s structures still in place and the left too weak to topple them, elites from both sides negotiated a restoration of democracy, with the regime insiders managing to maintain the initiative throughout the process. Established opinion hailed it as a paradigmatic success. [...]

The “Spanish exception” to the rising tide of xenophobia in Europe, therefore, only begins to make sense when one takes into account that the PP represents a sizable number of hard-right voters. More importantly, the kind of xenophobia that in other European countries articulates along a native–foreign “other” axis in Spain is harnessed along center–periphery lines—a reflection of what Eric Hobsbawm called the “anomalous and self-contained” nature of the country. Anti-immigrant rhetoric is not a leading plank of the PP’s platform—but it is not a coincidence that its most xenophobic politicians often come from Catalonia and the Basque Country, where they would otherwise have very little to offer right-wing voters. Indeed Badalona, the only large Catalan municipality recently governed by the PP (in 2011–‘15), became ground zero for a Le Pen-style experiment under the mayorship of Xavier García-Albiol, now the leader of the PP in Catalonia. Xenophobia lurks not far beneath the surface, ready to be weaponized if more traditional demagogy fails. [...]

C’s originates from Barcelona, where it was founded twelve years ago as a center-left party opposed to Catalan nationalism. Led by Albert Rivera, a young and charismatic former banker, it was catapulted onto the national stage in 2015. Following Podemos’ success, it positioned itself as a “safer” alternative to established politics. Like Emmanuel Macron in France, Rivera repeatedly defines himself as “neither left nor right.” Ideological vagueness has long been a part of the party’s approach: during the 2009 European elections it ditched its pro-EU platitudes and progressive credentials to join a Eurosceptic right-wing coalition.

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Politico: Catalan separatists to contest election separately

Puigdemont has repeatedly advocated for a joint list of secessionist parties from his current refuge in Belgium, where he is trying to avoid detention after Spain issued a European Arrest Warrant on sedition charges. The former regional president has said he would be prepared to take part in another pro-independence coalition, contradicting his previous assertions that he would not run for office again.

However, after Tuesday’s deadline came and went, it was clear that his arguments did not convince his erstwhile coalition partners from the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), which polls put in first place ahead of the ballot. Analysts say the ERC has more to lose than to win from a new alliance with Puigdemont’s center-right Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT). [...]

It’s unclear if a joint separatist platform would increase the parties’ chances in any case. Although the electoral system rewards the concentration of votes, alliances can repel voters as well as attract them. For example, leftist voters may be reluctant to choose a list that includes right-wingers and vice-versa.

A poll by Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia on Saturday placed the ERC first but didn’t guarantee the separatists an absolute majority in the regional assembly. The liberal Ciudadanos and the Catalan Socialists — both parties opposed to the latest independence bid — ranked second and third respectively ahead of Puigdemont’s PDeCAT. Other polls, however, do predict a pro-independence majority as in 2015.

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