Spain will vote for a new government in twenty days and the doubt installed in the street is one: will it be possible for one of the two majority parties, the conservative Popular Party or the progressive PSOE, to reach the necessary votes to be able to govern alone or will it be inevitable to repeat the coalition formula to govern the 48 million Spaniards?
To achieve a monocolor governmenta single party would have to be able to sit in Parliament, at least, 178 own deputiesthat is to say, half plus one of the 350 that make up Congress.
The last time this hpened in Spain it was in 2011when Mariano Rajoy, from the PP, achieved a majority of 186 seats and 44.62 percent of the votes.
“Let’s look for solutions in which the most voted list be acceptable when there is no other option”, postulates the former socialist president Felipe Gonzalez, who won general and legislative elections three times with an absolute majority.
a coalition
In private, the president and PSOE candidate for the general elections on July 23, Pedro Sanchez, does not hide what, for him, is a certainty: the next government of Spain will be a coalition.
A formula that presents, according to him, two possibilities: a right-wing government alliance, between the PP and Vox; or a coalition of lefts, agreed between the Socialist Party and Sumarthe new formation that brings together the parties to the left of the PSOE.
Led by the current Minister of Labor, Yolanda Diaz, Sumar will be released in the elections generals of July 23.
Pedro Sanchez, who leads the first coalition government of history democracy in Spain, bets that an alliance with Sumar would be less traumatic and would have less political cost than it meant have agreed with Podemosjust as it did in 2020.
The opinion of Felipe Gonzalez
“Because what I perceive today, as I perceived it 40 or 45 years ago, is that citizens feel enormous relief when they see that, instead of fighting over personal issues, to destroy the other, politicians agree” , says former President Felipe Gonzalez in an issue of the publication Nueva Revista dedicated to analyzing the pacts in Spanish politics.
To refer to the agreements that could arise between the PSOE and the PP, Felipe Gonzalez speaks of “centrality pacts”.
“They strengthen not only democracy, but also the destiny of a country,” says Gonzalez.
“When these centrality pacts dispear, the country weakens, becomes polarized, loses strength and credibility, both internally and internationally. And that is where we are now, ”she assures.
Perhs encouraged by the contagious enthusiasm of the absolute majorities that the PP obtained in May in the Community of Madrid -where Isabel Diaz Ayuso was re-elected-, and in the City Council of the cital, with Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president and candidate of the PP for July 23, he dreams that it is possible to govern alone.
In an act with the mayors of the PP in Toledo, Nunez Feijoo confessed on Sunday: “I want to win the elections, but not anyway”, he said, sweetened by the favorable result of the PP in the municipal and regional elections on May 28.
“I think that a sufficient majority to govern alone would suit Spain very well,” insisted the PP leader, distancing himself from who would be his only possible partner when agreeing on a government: the extreme right of Vox.
Although indoors, Nunez Feijoo does not hide that can only rule in alliance with the extreme right of Vox.
After the electoral results of the municipal and regional elections in May -so disastrous for the Spanish left that President Sanchez could not bear to wait for December and announced the electoral advance for this 23rd-, the PP has already agreed to regional governments with Vox.
He did it in Valencia and Extremadura. And they still negotiate in Aragon and Murcia.
The last chter of this marriage of convenience that the PP tries to make go as unnoticed as possible was what hpened in Extremadura, where the leader of the Extremadura Popular Party, Maria Guardiola, in less than ten days went from assuring that “I cannot leave those who deny sexist violence (as Vox does) to enter the government” agree with them.
“My word is not as important as the future of Extremadura,” Guardiola tried to excuse himself.
What the polls say
According to the analysis of the Spanish public television based on several surveys, the PP of Alberto Nunez Feijoo would obtain today around 33 percent at the polls.
This result would allow him to sit in Parliament almost 50 deputies more than the 87 which he obtained in the last general elections of 2019.
According to these polls, the PSOE would get 104 seats, 16 less of those it had until the Parliament was dissolved due to the electoral advance.
Vox would drop from 52 to 40 deputies and Sumar would debut with 32.
“We have to renew our toolbox, but we cannot abandon our history, because that means abandoning our identity and where we come from. Our past determines our future. There are spaces to do it”, insists Felipe Gonzalez.
Madrid. Correspondent
Source: Clarin
