In parliamentary elections last Sunday, Spain’s political right experienced an upset defeat amid rising discontent over austerity. While the ruling Popular Party was long expected to lose its outright majority, polls had predicted it would still win a plurality and likely be able to form a center-right coalition government with the upstart pro-business Citizens Party. Fortunately for progressives, both parties fell short of the majority necessary to govern. Instead, a newcomer, the radical-left Podemos (“We Can”), surged into third place, just behind the Socialists. Podemos rode a platform of reversing the economic austerity the Popular Party presided over since 2011, which has crippled Spain with an economic depression and yielded unemployment over 20 percent.
However, while the right-leaning bloc of the Popular Party and Citizens fell short of a joint majority, so did the logical left-leaning bloc of left-wing Podemos, the center-left Socialists, and the far-left United Left. Now, several tiny regionalist and separatist parties from Catalonia, the Basque Country, and elsewhere will hold the balance of power. Many of these parties lean strongly to the left on economic issues, while both the Popular Party and Citizens Party are very hostile towards regionalism, which suggests they’d be predisposed toward joining a left-wing coalition.
But regional nationalists will likely demand concessions on constitutional reform or even an independence referendum in Catalonia, which the Socialists have opposed. Complicating matters even further, the Popular Party retained an absolute majority in Spain’s upper legislative chamber, the Senate. While the lower house has far more power over legislation, the Senate’s acquiescence is necessary for the kind of constitutional reforms the regional parties (and Podemos) favor, such as a transition to federalism.
Despite these difficulties, Spain will most likely either wind up with a left-leaning rainbow coalition headed by the Socialists. But if such a coalition proves too unstable on account of friction between the larger parties and the regional ones, we could see early elections in just a few months.
But whatever happens, this election serves as a rejection of the EU-directed neoliberal austerity policies that have crushed everyday working people across Europe, much like similar elections this year in Portugal and Greece. If Podemos can be likened to anything in the United States, it would be as though a new political party arose from Occupy Wall Street and quickly rivaled both the Democrats and Republicans in size. But Podemos’ ascent, which shows that radical activism remains a potent force in Europe, also owes a great deal to the proportional representation system used through the continent—a very different system from our own, which pushes politics toward just two parties.
But while the two-party system is here to stay in America, thanks to the rise of both Podemos and the Citizens Party, the two-party era of the Socialists and Popular Party dominance over Spanish politics looks to be ending. It’s giving way to a true multi-party system that may roll back the punishing austerity that has ravaged Spain for years and perhaps bring even deeper fundamental changes to the country.