Insight
Spain’s groundhog day: Why Madrid needs a government by Camino Mortera-Martinez 12 September 2016
Whether or not there is a third election, Spain needs a government. Madrid must be a credible partner as the EU confronts multiple crises, from migration to Brexit. Spaniards currently feel that they are in a time-loop. They will probably have to go to the polls once more this Christmas, for the third time in twelve months. Neither the December 2015 election nor this June’s produced a clear winner, and the main political parties have been unable to form a government. A third election will not be the catastrophe some portray it as. But if Spain’s main political parties fail to reach an agreement even after a third election, both Madrid and Brussels will be in trouble: Spain needs to make budget cuts if it wants to avoid an EU fine, but a caretaker government cannot approve a new budget. And the EU will not be able to rely on Spain at a time when it needs to take important decisions, from how to manage the migration crisis to dealing with Brexit Britain. Spaniards have been voting for a while now: since the spring of 2015, there have also been regional elections in all but two of Spain’s regions. Galicia and the Basque Country are voting at the end of the month. And Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s pro-independence president, is facing a motion of confidence on September 28th. If he fails, Catalonia will need to hold new elections, the fourth in six years. Whether or not there are new elections, pro-independence forces are still going strong in Catalonia: in July, the Catalonian Parliament voted to initiate a unilateral ‘process of disconnection’ from Spain, which includes another referendum and an eventual declaration of independence. In the 40 years since its transition from dictatorship to democracy, Spain has always had a government. Spain’s two mainstream political parties – the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the social-democrat Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) – have alternated in power, often supported by smaller regional parties. The Spanish electoral system is designed to promote a strong two-party system so as to avoid the sort of hung parliaments that have caused so much trouble in the past. So there is little experience of how to govern the country without clear-cut majorities. But Spaniards need to get used to this new reality, as two new parties have emerged: the far-left Podemos, a product of the indignados movement which took to the streets in 2011; and Ciudadanos, an anti-secessionist party originating in Catalonia
CER INSIGHT: Spain’s Groundhog Day: Why Madrid needs a government 12 September 2016
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