• Pacts.The PSC prescribes calm the PSOE to the gestures of ERC
  • Teruel Existe. Achieves a deputy and is the most voted party in the province
  • 10-N. The regionalist revolution against the big parties: from Teruel There is the PRC and the Canarian nationalists
  • Galicia.BNG, the return to the Galician Independence Chamber

The XIV Legislature starts with the constitution of General Courts that are already anticipating Levante. For some, ungovernable; for many, predictably brief; and for almost everyone, chaotic. A total of 350 seats in Congress, distributed among 16 political forces that will be distributed in nine parliamentary groups , one of which, the Mixed, will be overpopulated giving shelter to eight secessionist, nationalist or regionalist parties or coalitions that have not reached the standards to become a solo group.

The fragmentation of the Chamber, the largest of democracy, predicts an uncertain future legislature, and not only because of the number of actors, but above all because of the crossed and particular interests wielded by each of them.

The majority force, the PSOE (120 seats), which aspires to form a government, is interested in a clear Congress in which the groups align according to the traditional left-right division. If so, they would be able to add sufficient support for the majority of initiatives with United We (35 deputies), More Country (3), ERC (13), Bildu (5) and BNG (1) as a minimum. However, this time, the left-right duality will be greatly overcome. The blocks that are outlined in the Chamber are multiple and changing and that predicts great instability.

The Socialists have struggled after the elections to try to channel the debates at the level of the traditional ideological confrontation. Pedro Sánchez has undertaken the search for investor support based on a critical mass conformed with United We can and flying the flag of the "progressive" Government.

The "rights" side

It is a way of polarizing debate and negotiation, placing those who do not accept secondary education without nuances on the side of "the rights." The strategy has been clear in its negotiation - still incipient - with ERC, in which the Socialists since the first meeting have tried to emphasize the communion of approaches to social and labor rights "curtailed by the governments of the PP", leaving in the background the key demands of the republican independence formation: right of self-determination and amnesty for the leaders of the process , condemned by sedition and embezzlement.

In spite of this, the disparity of interests that will nest in the new Congress will not allow the formation of such simple sides. The political forces will be placed in the parliamentary debate according to a scheme of changing, crossed and overlapping axes: left-right, constitutionalist-independence, nationalist-stateist ... and, as a loose verse, the anti-system with a declared vocation of torpedo in all directions. With so many unknowns, the possibilities of reediting the variable geometry method - based on the predictability of the actors - that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero put into practice to govern in the minority now seems very insufficient.

Uncertainty is a sensation installed in all parliamentary forces, mainly among deputies and veteran senators. Ana Oramas (Canary Coalition), one of the most experienced deputies, declares herself "surprised and worried" about how events are unfolding, how it is intended to negotiate without documents, without clarifications, without clear objectives and with an eye on only the short term: "In an investiture and not in a legislature."

Some ways, he assures, until now unknown and disconcerting that make him doubt the future. "The stability of the country," he warns, "cannot precisely be in the hands of the forces that are not interested in the country, they don't care." In fact, there are few who believe that the new Parliament can enlighten great agreements and many who anticipate the impossibility of achieving state pacts or promoting the important reforms that Spain needs. And they cite: the pension system, the regional financing model, the labor market review, taxation and, of course, the General State Budgets.

The price of the vote

"Approving some Budgets," warns a former socialist minister, "is much more difficult than approving an investiture. Endless demands from various actors that must fit into a strict income and expense framework in exchange for support and dozens of votes that must be be overcome all; if one is lost the building collapses ".

In a Congress in which nationalisms, regionalisms and even localisms proliferate, the price of each vote in a budget debate can reach stratospheric levels.

The impossibility of carrying out some Budgets was already the cause of the electoral advance last spring. Spain remains with the latest accounts designed by Cristóbal Montoro, which have already undergone two extensions. If the future government were unable to approve new budgets, the legislature would be immediately sentenced. In all political forces there are voices that already warn that this hypothesis is more than plausible.

The vice president of Madrid, Ignacio Aguado (Citizens), observes from outside the movements to undertake the legislature and agrees with this fear. "The fragmentation of Congress, the polarization, allows us to assume that there will be no reforms in Spain. The major reforms that are needed will remain pending," he said this week.

The forces of the extremes

In the orange formation they also indicate a greater "radicalization" of Congress with a "diluted center", precisely the one they occupied and which has collapsed after 10-N. The tension inoculated by the forces of the extremes will be a more distorting variable of consensus: Vox, threatening the position of the PP, and United We can press from within the Government to the PSOE while secessionism raises its stakes.

Rafael Hernando , former PP parliamentary spokesman in Congress and now a senator, predicts a stage in which alliances will be "very complicated" and points out that the one now trying to configure itself to carry out the investiture and the formation of Government "will be very serious difficulties".

Hernando predicts that we will see ERC "permanent inmate of what the PdeCAT does [for Puigdemont]" and, finally, both independentist forces "accusing themselves of betrayals of treason." Hernando does not see the current Socialist Group piloting State pacts.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • ERC
  • United We Can
  • PP
  • PSOE
  • More Country
  • State's general budgets
  • Vox
  • José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
  • Ignacio Aguado
  • Canary Coalition
  • Citizens
  • Bildu
  • BNG
  • Politics
  • General elections

General elections 2019Elections: Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias reach a government agreement with the leader of Podemos as vice president

General elections 2019 The PSOE ignores the abstention of the PP despite the internal debate

Spain Pedro Sánchez fails in his plebiscite and Vox shoots at the expense of Citizens