The Diplomat
Several of the most prestigious international newspapers yesterday highlighted the uncertainty Spain faces in forming a government, following the insufficient victory of the PP and the unexpected recovery of the Socialists in the July 23 general elections.
Under the headline “Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s bitter victory”, the French daily Le Monde highlights that, “although the Popular Party has come out ahead in the elections, with three million more votes than in the 2019 elections”, its results “did not live up to the goals it had set for itself” and the right-wing leader “does not seem capable of building a coalition government”. “He thought that he alone would get as many votes as the Socialist Party and its alternative left-wing partner, Sumar,” which “would have allowed him to demand that Vox, the far-right party, let him govern alone, by abstaining in the investiture vote,” it added.
For its part, Le Figaro affirms that “the victory of the Popular Party will not allow it to form a majority in Parliament, which could allow the Socialist president, Pedro Sánchez, to stay in power”. “This is a huge surprise that belies almost all the polls, with the exception of those of a public institute whose conclusions, systematically favorable to the Socialist Party and far removed from the election results, had ended up taking away all credibility,” it continues.
“The outgoing head of government, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez, has won one of his most daring bets: he has proved all the forecasts wrong and prevented a majority of right-wingers and extreme right-wingers from ousting him from the Moncloa Palace,” the Parisian daily states. “The party that can make the difference is that of the former Catalan separatist president, Carles Puigdemont, who went to live in Belgium to avoid the action of Spanish justice”, but Junts “has installed itself in the systematic opposition to all Spanish institutions, including the government, including Sánchez, who pardoned his fellow politicians and reformed the Penal Code in his favor”, it adds.
In a similar vein, the Italian daily La Repubblica reports that “the only one with concrete possibilities of forming a government majority would be the outgoing president, who however depends on the options of the Catalan pro-independence formation Junts”. However, it adds, “the new arrest warrant decreed by the Supreme Court judges against leader Carles Puigdemont eliminates the possibility of dialogue”.
For its part, New York Time writes that “Spain was plunged into political uncertainty Sunday after national elections left no party with enough support to form a government, likely resulting in weeks of haggling or, potentially, a new vote later this year.” “The result was an inconclusive election and a political imbroglio that has become familiar to Spaniards since their two-party system fractured nearly a decade ago,” the U.S. newspaper highlights.
“Spain faces political deadlock, uncertainty and weeks or months of negotiations after the Conservatives won the country’s general election but failed to win enough votes to form a government,” writes the British daily The Times. “The stalemate will potentially push Carles Puigdemont, an exiled Catalan separatist leader, back to center stage, as Sanchez could try to strike a deal for his hard-line center-right pro-independence party to abstain if the Socialist leader tries to form a coalition government,” but “such a pact would require further concessions of the kind that made Sanchez’s last government’s alliances with Basque and Catalan separatist parties unpopular,” it adds.
For its part, The Guardian indicates that “the expected coalition between the conservative Popular Party and the far-right Vox has failed to materialize (…) contrary to everything that pollsters and pundits had predicted would happen”. The elections were expected to “mark the beginning of a coalition government between the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party”, but the PP’s victory has been “much narrower than expected and the party failed to obtain the absolute majority it had hoped for”.
Under the headline “Division wins in Spain”, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung states that, “certainly, the country will be spared the feared influence of the right-wing populists of Vox in the formation of the government and Spain’s partners in the European Union can also breathe a sigh of relief at this point”, but “the division and lack of reconciliation that are increasingly paralyzing Spanish politics are only likely to increase in the coming weeks after a very tough election campaign”.
The also German Die Welt states that, in Spain, “everyone has won in some way, or at least claims to have won: the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Conservatives’ rival, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. One had not lost as much as he feared, the other had won as much as he hoped, but who will govern Spain in the future is completely open.” “Only the right-wing populists of the Vox party clearly lost,” continues the newspaper, which wonders if “Spain will continue to be one of the few countries, in Europe, in the world, that still seems to be immune to the phenomenon.”
