Will be the Left-Wing Government in Spain formed?

Abstract

The author analyzes the long process of seeking consent for the formation of a leftwing government by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSIW), which won the parliamentary elections on April 28, 2019 (123 seats) and the left-wing Podemos party («We Can!», 42 seats). The agreement was close – the political programs are close or even coincide on many problems of the country's socio-economic development. But almost three months of meetings between leaders and the teams they formed turned out to be fruitless. Among the many reasons are the mutual distrust and fears of the socialists in the possibility of coordinated work of the government in solving complex domestic political problems. First of all, the Catalan one, according to which the positions of both parties differ in many respects. But even having agreed, they would still need the support of other parliamentary factions (11 votes) in order to get an absolute majority at the time the government was sworn in. The necessary simple majority in the second round would be given by an agreement with the right-wing opposition - the People’s Party and Ciudadanos will abstain from voting. They flatly refused this option. At the same time, the claims of Pablo Iglesias in the negotiations grew every day. The ending is sad: the socialists were twice defeated in a vote of confidence in their one-party government. The fourth in four years parliamentary elections loomed on the horizon. If by the next round of voting – September 23, 2019, both leaders do not compromise under pressure from their constituents and influential big business players, then so be it.

Keywords

• formation of a left-wing government
• mutual distrust of leaders
• podemos
• people’s party
• ciudad nos
• spanish socialist workers’ party
• compromise
• informational confrontation
• sanchez’s pragmatism and iglesias’ ambitions