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Basque Country, Galicia, Spain

Pressure builds on Sánchez as third Spanish election looms

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(EFE)
Felipe González, right, a respected former four-term prime minister, has called on Pedro Sánchez, the current PSOE leader, to allow a conservative minority government. (EFE)

Felipe González was just 41 years old when he became, in the view of many Spaniards, the most consequential prime minister to date in post-Franco Spain.galiciabasqueSpain_Flag_Icon

Across a span of 14 years in power, González, the leader of the center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), won four consecutive elections, normalized the rule of law and the traditions of democratic participation in Spain, brought the country into what was then the European Economic Community, the forerunner of today’s European Union, and shepherded Spain into NATO as a firm member of the transatlantic military and security alliance.

Today, while Spaniards take for granted many of those accomplishments as pillars of the Spanish state, González is also now remembered for the levels of corruption that sank his final government and a botched attempt to combat armed Basque nationalists.

But he’s still the first among Spain’s elder statesmen, in many ways as influential as the former king, Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in 2014 in favor of his son Felipe VI. In truth, the two are more responsible than anyone for Spain’s vibrant democracy today.

Third election a Christmas miracle?

As his country enters its 10th month without a government, voters may worry that Spanish democracy has become a bit too vibrant in recent years, as a strong two-party political system has crumbled into a four-party state with myriad regionalist parties from all corners of Spain, its two-party system dissolved under the penumbra of depression-level GDP contraction and unemployment.

That’s why, after two elections, the first in December 2015 and the second in June 2016, no party can quite cobble together the necessary majority to form a government. If Spain’s party leaders cannot unlock a breakthrough by the end of October, the country will head to the polls for the third time in 13 months, possibly even on Christmas Day 2016.

González, who has doled out criticism for all of Spain’s political leaders, is one of the few PSOE figures publicly urging his party and its young leader, Pedro Sánchez, to concede its fight to deny another government under conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy. In his view, Spain would suffer greater damage from a third general election in 13 months — as polls show that yet another snap election would result in essentially the same deadlock as the last two. In a country where turnout of 75% or more isn’t uncommon, turnout dropped from 69.7% in December to just 65.7% in June, and it could fall even lower, to 63% or worse, with another snap vote. Generally speaking, Spanish observers believe that will boost the PP, at the expense of the PSOE and Podemos, the leftist, anti-austerity movement that formed in 2014 out of the indignados movement of Spain’s masses of unemployed workers.

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RELATED: PSOE’s incentives point to PP-Ciudadanos minority government in Spain

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Another election in Spain would come as both Germany and France face national elections in 2017 with rising eurosceptic sentiment. It would come weeks after a make-or-break referendum on constitutional reform that’s seen as a plebiscite on Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, and as the United Kingdom, under its new prime minister Theresa May, maneuvers to leave the European Union after its blockbuster June 2016 ‘Brexit’ vote. It could fall just days after the United States might elect businessman and reality television star Donald Trump as its next president.

So the last thing Spain’s leaders (and European and American leaders) want is another inconclusive vote and prolonged uncertainty that could threaten the slight economic growth that Spain’s generated in 2015 and 2016 and that has left the country without a government to implement a budget for the next year or provide leadership in ongoing post-Brexit debates over the European Union’s future.

Rajoy fails to win investiture vote

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy has continued to lead a caretaker government since last December. (Facebook)
Prime minister Mariano Rajoy has continued to lead a caretaker government since last December. (Facebook)

The latest despair comes after another failed attempt by Rajoy to retain power. Although his conservative Partido Popular (PP, the People’s Party) won the greatest number of seats in the most recent June election (indeed, a 14-seat increase from the December election), he has twice failed to win two confidence votes since the end of August, with a majority of the Chamber of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputados), the lower house of the Spanish parliament, blocking Rajoy’s investiture. Continue reading Pressure builds on Sánchez as third Spanish election looms →

Spain

New PSOE leader Sánchez faces uphill struggle to unite Spanish left

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sanchez

He’s a disarmingly handsome economics professor, and he’s the first major Spanish party leader who grew up chiefly in the post-Franco era and in the era of Spanish democracy.Spain_Flag_Icon

But Pedro Sánchez, who leapfrogged the more well-known Eduardo Madina to become the leader of Spain’s Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) earlier this month, and who will assume the leadership later this week, will have his work cut out for him before elections that will take place within the next 17 months, with the party’s traditional voting base increasingly supporting both new and established alternatives on the Spanish left. 

Sánchez (pictured above), just 42 years old, has only been a member of the Congreso de los Diputados (Congress of Deputies), the lower house of the Spanish parliament, the Cortes Generales, from 2009 to 2011 and  since January 2013, representing Madrid, where he served as a city councillor for the preceding five years.

Sánchez won the PSOE’s first direct contest to elect the party’s general secretary in a three-way race, with 48.7% of all votes against just 36.1% for Madina and 15.1% for the more left-wing José Antonio Pérez Tapias.

Though Madina, at age 38, is even younger than Sánchez, he’s been a member of the Congress of Deputies since 2004 and the secretary-general of the PSOE’s congressional caucus since 2009. A Basque federalist, he was perceived as the frontrunner in the race, especially after taking a republican stand in the aftermath of Juan Carlos I’s abdication from the throne. But the favorite to lead the PSOE, Andalusia’s 39-year-old regional president, Susana Díaz, endorsed Sánchez instead, as did many former officials from the administration of former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, including former public works and transportation minister José Blanco.

That effectively lifted the more unknown Sánchez, who holds a doctorate in economics, above Madina, who once lost part of his left leg in a Basque nationalist bomb blast.

On his election, Sánchez declared the ‘beginning of the end of Rajoy,’  challenging the unpopular center-right government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy, which has presided over the worst of Spain’s recent economic crisis.

Not so fast.  Continue reading New PSOE leader Sánchez faces uphill struggle to unite Spanish left →

Spain

Can Felipe VI do for federalism what Juan Carlos did for democracy?

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felipeVI

Spain’s king, Juan Carlos I — who is to have once proclaimed that ‘kings don’t abdicate, they die in their sleep’ — surprised his country with the announcement earlier today that he would, in fact, abdicate the kingdom that he has held since 1975.Spain_Flag_Icon

Juan Carlos’s legacy today is undisputedly the role he played in the transition to Spanish democracy following the death of Spain’s longtime 20th century strongman Francisco Franco. As his country prepares for the inauguration coronation of his son, Felipe VI (pictured above), it’s not too early to consider whether Felipe can achieve the constitutional reforms that could mollify and temper Spain’s regionalism through some form of federalism.

It wasn’t necessarily destined that Juan Carlos de Borbón would ascend to the throne, in light of the proclamation of the second Spanish republic in 1931, Spanish king Alfonso XIII’s subsequent flight and, in 1941, his abdication after the conservative Franco came to power in 1939.

Though Franco allowed for Alfonso XIII’s grandson, Juan Carlos, to return to Spain for his education, his relationship to the monarchy remained throughout the Franco era.  A conservative who supported the monarchy prior to 1931, Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy in 1947, but that didn’t mean he was keen to hand any amount of power to the royal family. Instead, Franco left the monarchy officially vacant, ruling instead as ‘regent’ for the next 28 years. It was only in 1969 that Franco named Juan Carlos as crown prince, firmly clearing the path for Juan Carlos to succeed Franco as Spain’s head of state in 1975.

JCandfranco

Having sworn an oath to Franco’s Movimiento Nacional (National Movement), it also wasn’t a certainty that Juan Carlos would move so swiftly transition his country toward democracy following Franco’s death. After all, Juan Carlos (pictured above with Franco) owed his position entirely to a mix of pro-Franco military forces and political elites — nationalist, fascist, conservative and monarchist.

Even after Juan Carlos announced Adolfo Suárez as his prime minister with a mandate of democratic transition, and even after Suárez himself formed Spain’s first elected government in the post-Franco era,  Spain’s republicans — a mix of separatists, liberals, democrats and communists — still weren’t sure whether to trust Juan Carlos.

That changed for two reasons. Continue reading Can Felipe VI do for federalism what Juan Carlos did for democracy? →

Spain

With Spanish left reeling, Rubalcaba steps down as PSOE leader

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rubalcaba

The European parliamentary elections have claimed their first national leader in Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the general secretary of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), Spain’s traditional center-left party.Spain_Flag_Icon

In Sunday’s elections, Spanish voters elected 54 members of the European Parliament. The ruling Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party) of prime minister Mariano Rajoy won the largest share of the vote, around 26%, and the largest number of seats, 16.

The PSOE placed second with just 23% and 14 seats — that’s a loss of nine seats in the European Parliament.

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Rubalcaba, taking the blame for his party’s losses, announced he would step down from the leadership, calling a meeting on July 19-20 to select a new general secretary of Spain’s largest center-left party:

“We have not managed to regain the trust of the citizens,” Mr Rubalcaba told a press conference in Madrid on Monday, adding that he would not stand for re-election at an extraordinary party conference in July. “We have to take political responsibility for the bad results, and this decision is absolutely mine,” he added.

There’s no guarantee that the next PSOE leader will be able to unite the Spanish left, which has fractured in the face of the economic crisis in the past five years.

The PSOE’s performance was hardly much worse than Rajoy’s party, which lost eight seats. Taken together, the two major Spanish parties won around 49% of the vote. That’s down from nearly 84% in the 2008 Spanish general election, 80% in the previous 2009 European elections and 73% in the 2011 general election.

So while the greater pressure fell on Rubalcaba and the PSOE, the results are hardly heartening for Rajoy. Continue reading With Spanish left reeling, Rubalcaba steps down as PSOE leader →

Catalunya, Spain

In refusing Catalan vote, Rajoy risks isolating himself and Spain’s future

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rajoy isolated

It’s not like Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy didn’t have any warning.cataloniaSpain_Flag_Icon

Catalan regional president Artur Mas called early regional elections for November 2012 for the express purpose of winning a mandate behind the call for greater autonomy and/or independence for Catalunya.  That didn’t work out so incredibly well for Mas and his autonomist center-right Convergència i Unió (CiU, Convergence and Union), which lost 12 seats in the 135-member Catalan parliament, and was forced to form a unity government with the pro-independence, leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya).  Nonetheless, the election largely ratified the strength of the Catalan separatists, who control 87 seats to just 48 for Catalunya’s federalist parties. catalanmap

Three months ago, on September 11 — upon the celebration of Catalan national day — nearly 400,000 Catalan citizens formed a human chain stretching from the Pyrenees to the coast to emphasize just how fervently they support their right to self-determination.

Rajoy, much to his discredit, has ignored those Catalans, and Mas’s government has now set November 9, 2014 as the date for a referendum on Catalan independence — with or without the Spanish federal government’s blessing — after a vote last Thursday in the Catalan parliament that enjoyed the universal support of Mas’s Convergence and Union, the Republic Left and the Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV, Initiative for Catalonia Greens).  Rajoy (pictured above) and his justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón (pictured below) have made clear that not only is a referendum unacceptable under the Spanish constitution, but that they won’t be coerced into negotiating with Mas over devolving greater power (and funds) back to Catalunya, one of the wealthiest regions in Spain.  With over 7.5 million people, the region account for one-fifth of Spain’s economic output.

Ruiz-Gallardon

If the vote actually goes ahead next November (and there’s some reason to believe that Mas is bluffing), it could constitute the most severe constitutional crisis since Spain’s return to democracy in the late 1970s.

To some degree, it’s easy to sympathize with Rajoy.  Though he took office just over two years ago when the center-right Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party) ousted the center-left government headed by José Luis Zapatero and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party) in November 2011, Rajoy’s popularity has plummeted as he’s pushed Spain through higher taxes and budget cuts.  That fiscal adjustment is plausibly both the cause and effect of a cycle of economic depression that’s left Spain reeling, including an unemployment rate of 26.6% that may be peaking only after five years of GDP contraction.  Spanish finances remain in tatters, despite the budgetary efforts of both the Zapatero and Rajoy governments, and Rajoy simply can’t afford to send more euros to Barcelona.  It’s not difficult to see the slippery slope that would begin once Rajoy starts negotiating with Rajoy over Spanish federalism.  An equally pro-autonomy regional government in Euskadi (Basque Country), which is also wealthier than the Spanish average, will be sure to follow with their own demands.  Other regions, like Galicia and Andalusia, the latter one of Europe’s most economically forlorn, might also make demands for stimulus.

It’s equally easy to see the naked political game that Mas is playing.  You need only look to the way that the referendum will be structured — Catalans will first be asked, ‘Do you want Catalonia to be a state?’ Those who agree with the first question will subsequently be asked, ‘Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?’  The vote will be an easy way for Catalans to register their disapproval with Madrid without taking the kind of steps that could truly rupture Catalunya from Spain and that could leave Catalunya as an independent country outside the European Union (if only temporarily).  Mas is clearly using the referendum as a game to strengthen his hand vis-à-vis negotiations with Rajoy and, perhaps, to maximize his own standing within the Catalan electorate.  Some relatively moderate voices within the CiU coalition have even said that the referendum should only be held if it’s ultimately deemed ‘legal’ by Madrid.  The shell game of posing two questions to determine whether Catalunya should be a state or an independent state conveniently blurs the line of independence — it’s such a cynical ploy that it’s hard to take Mas seriously as a statesman, despite the legitimate sentiment of millions of pro-independence Catalans.

But Mas can get away with such demagoguery largely because of Rajoy’s intransigence.   Continue reading In refusing Catalan vote, Rajoy risks isolating himself and Spain’s future →

Basque Country, Catalunya, Galicia, Spain

Rajoy survives election season in Spain’s most separatist regions

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It’s not exactly accurate to say that Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy has ‘won’ in the aftermath of three regional elections in the past two months in Galicia, Euskadi (i.e., the Basque Country) and Catalunya.

But it’s fair to say that, compared to the worst-case result in each region, Rajoy’s government is likely relieved at the results of each of the three elections, especially last weekend’s Catalan elections, which threatened not only to undermine Rajoy’s federal authority, but to undermine the stability of Spain as a nation-state.

Rajoy (pictured above, right, with Catalan president Artur Mas) has had an incredibly difficult first year since taking office in December 2011 — he’s  continued Spanish austerity policies in the face of continued recession and amid the highest unemployment within the eurozone (over 25%).  With Spanish voters disillusioned about the economy and with Catalan voters, in particular, agitating for greater autonomy — if not full independence from Spain’s federal union — Rajoy and his center-right Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party), together with the PP’s various local, regional iterations, were playing defense, at best, in each region.

In each election, however, there are reasons for Rajoy to take heart.

It’s obvious that the autumn’s regional elections could have been much worse: Rajoy’s party could have lost power in Galicia, the former radical leftist ETA sympathizers could have won control of the Basque government, and an outright majority win by Mas and the CiU in Catalunya would have likely caused an immediate political and, indeed, constitutional crisis — and, given the bond market’s jitters, likely a financial crisis as well.

Continue reading Rajoy survives election season in Spain’s most separatist regions →

Catalunya, Spain

Mas push for CiU dominance — and Catalan independence — backfires

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When Artur Mas (pictured above) called early elections in late September, there was every reason to believe he would improve the position of his autonomist, center-right party, Convergència i Unió (CiU, Convergence and Union), in the wake of protests in Barcelona and throughout Catalunya (specifically on Sept. 11, a nationalist holiday in Catalunya) in favor of greater independence from Spain’s beleaguered federal government. 

Even as recently as a month ago, it seemed that CiU was poised to gain enough seats to take an absolute majority in the 135-member Catalan parliament (the Parlament de Catalunya).

Instead, Mas’s party lost 12 seats and will fall to just 50 seats in the Catalan parliament.  The CiU has long been Catalunya’s dominant party, and it controlled Catalunya’s regional parliament from 1980 until 2003 — it has won the largest share of seats in every regional election since Spain’s return to democracy, and that was always unlikely to change after Sunday’s election.  Moreover, the result leaves the CiU in a stronger position than after the 2003 and 2006 elections, when a resurgent federalist, center-left Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC, Socialists’ Party of Catalunya) won enough seats to lead governing coalitions in the regional government.

All the same, Mas’s gambit — hopping on the bandwagon of wide Catalan discontent by wrapping himself in the cause of Catalan independence — has clearly backfired, and Mas will have fallen back from a near-absolute majority status two years sooner than necessary.

The CiU won just 30.68% of the vote on Sunday, a drop of 7.75% from the 2010 election that returned the CiU to power.

Meanwhile, the PSC won 14.43% and just 20 seats — eight fewer than its historically poor result in 2010.

The ‘winner’ of the election in relative terms is clearly the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya) — a leftist party in favor of Catalan independence, which won 13.68% and 21 seats, giving it the second-largest number of seats in the parliament (although just barely).  The CiU will most likely seek a governing coalition with the ERC for a broad separatist coalition.  Although the ERC joined in a governing coalition with the PSC from 2003 to 2010, its current leader since 2011, Oriol Junqueras, has moderated the ERC’s sometimes-radical leftist tone, while pulling the ERC toward a more pro-independence line.

Both moves make it a likelier coalition partner for the CiU, and Junqueras looks set to become the second-most important politician in Catalunya after Mas.  The ERC has indicated, however, that it will seek some moderation of the CiU’s support for austerity policies in exchange for joining any coalition.  If negotiations fail with the ERC, however, the CiU might also seek a coalition with the PSC or other parties.

The Partit Popular de Catalunya (PPC, People’s Party of Catalunya) — the local variant of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party) won 12.99% and gained one seat for a total of 19.

The Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (ICV-EUiA), a green/leftist coalition, won 9.89% and 13 seats, while Ciutadans – Partit de la Ciutadania (C’s, Citizens — Party of the Citizenry), a center-left, federalist and euroskeptic Catalan party, won 7.58% and nine seats.  A group of radical leftists, the Candidatures d’Unitat Popular (CUP — Popular Unity Candidates), broke through for the first time at the regional level with 3.48% and three seats.

To understand Sunday’s vote, it’s helpful to look at the result on three axes:

  • On the axis of ‘federalist’ parties (PSC, PPC and Ciutadans) versus autonomist and pro-independence parties (everyone else), the ‘federalists’ won 48 seats to 87 seats for the ‘separatists.’  If you break down the 2010 result, this is a one-seat ‘gain’ for ‘separatists.’ So the Catalan parliament will actually remain remarkably stable in terms of the balance of power on the separatist axis.
  • On the axis of center-right parties (CiU and PPC) versus leftist parties of all stripes, it’s clear that Sunday was a win for the broad ‘left’: the center-right parties, together, won 80 seats in 2010 versus just 55 for leftist parties; in 2012, the broad ‘right’ will control just 69 seats to 66 seats for the broad ‘left.’
  • But the real story of the election comes when you look at the axis of parties that are ‘tainted’ with having supported austerity policies — that includes not just the PPC and CiU, but also the PSC, which controlled Catalunya’s fiscal policy through 2010 and is the local arm of the national center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) that governed Spain until December 2011 and implemented the first of Spain’s federal austerity policies.  Those three parties’ share of the Catalan parliament’s seats dropped from 108 to 89 on Sunday, while the other parties — all of which are anti-austerity and/or protest parties of some degree — surged from 27 seats to 46 seats.

Taken together, the result indicates that Catalans haven’t necessarily reached a point of historically high support for independence as much as they, like most electorates throughout Europe in the past three years, remain weary of recession and unemployment, coupled simultaneously with budget cuts and tax increases.

At the end of the day, when you get past all of the sturm und drang about Catalan independence leading up to the election, the Catalan result fits fairly neatly within the context of the wider eurozone debate (which Edward Hugh noted back in October).  I’ll have some further thoughts later today or tomorrow in a separate post on what the result means for ‘Catalan independence’ as such.  Continue reading Mas push for CiU dominance — and Catalan independence — backfires →

Basque Country, Galicia, Spain

Spanish conservatives take Galicia; Basque nationalists win Euskadi

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Sunday’s regional elections in Galicia and Euskadi (i.e., the Basque Country) have given just about everyone in Spanish politics something to be happy about.

In Galicia, the ruling center-right Partido Popular de Galicia (PPdeG, People’s Party of Galicia) of Galician president  Alberto Núñez Feijóo (pictured above, top right), the local branch of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP, People’s Party), extended its majority in the 75-member Parlamento de Galicia from 38 to 41 after winning 45.72% of the vote.

In Euskadi, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV, EAJ, the Basque Nationalist Party or, in Basque, the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea) emerged with the largest number of seats in the Eusko Legebiltzarra (Basque parliament), with 27 seats on 34.64% of the vote.  Like Galicia, Euskadi’s unicameral parliament has 75 members.

As such, the PNV fended off a strong challenge from a more radical leftist and more firmly pro-independence coalition of Basque nationalists — the contest was widely seen as a fight between the more centrist PNV and the coalition of the ezker abertzalea (‘patriotic left’) formed this year, the Euskal Herria Bildu (EHB).

 The PNV, however, is now likely to form a government and its leader, Íñigo Urkullu (pictured above, bottom), is very likely to become lehendakari (president) of Euskadi.  Urkullu is the former PNV leader in Biscay, a stronghold for the party, and he became party leader in 2008.  The likely return of the PNV to government will put it back in power after only its first stint in opposition in the past 30 years.

So what do Sunday’s regional elections means more widely for Spain?

The result will give some comfort to Rajoy (pictured above, top left), who hails from Galicia, a center-right heartland within Spain.  Rajoy once served in Galicia’s parliament, and Rajoy and his party will be delighted to see Feijóo’s local Galician allies extend their majority.  After extending the center-right majority in Galicia and winning a plurality, if not an absolute majority, of seats in the March 2012 regional elections in the center-left stronghold of Andalucía, Spain’s most populous region (despite remaining in the opposition), Rajoy can take respite that his party retains some support throughout the country, which is suffering its fourth year of consecutive economic malaise and unemployment that’s perhaps the highest in Europe at just over 25%.

But the result will also embolden nationalist movements throughout Spain, especially Catalunya, where the separatist movement has taken an increasingly popular turn in the past couple of months.  Catalan president Artur Mas called snap elections early last month, and Mas is engaged in a high-profile political fight over regionalism with Rajoy — Catalunya votes on November 25.  Urkullu, who called for calm following the election, has been vague about his plans for the region, and he has not said whether he intends to seek full independence for Euskadi or merely greater regional autonomy.  But he is seen as the more moderate of the two Basque nationalist party leaders in a region where the armed separatist group, the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), signed a ceasefire just one year ago.

The result will also provide some small amount of delight for the radical left, which can point to gains in both regions.

Continue reading Spanish conservatives take Galicia; Basque nationalists win Euskadi →

Basque Country, Catalunya, Galicia, Spain

Six ways in which Sunday’s Galician and Basque elections will affect the Rajoy government

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Just over 10% of Spain’s population will vote in regional elections this weekend in two key regions, Galicia and Euskadi (the Basque Country), but the elections will play a role in shaping the national politics that affect the remaining 90% of Spain at what’s an especially precarious time for the government of center-right prime minister Mariano Rajoy (pictured above with Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo).

Although Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP, People’s Party) only recently came to power in November 2011, after the eight-year government of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), Rajoy has faced an unenviably difficult climate.  Spain’s economy is contracting this year after two years of tepid growth under 1%, which followed a contraction in 2008-09.  Unemployment is now just over 25%, among the highest in the eurozone.

Despite the tough economic conditions, Zapatero’s government, and now Rajoy’s government, have been relentless in slashing the Spanish budget.  Although Spain ran a fairly tight fiscal policy throughout the 2000s, the drop in tax revenue has resulted in an exploding budget deficit, which Rajoy hopes to reduce to just 6.3% of GDP this year (and 4.5% next year and 3% in 2014), in order to prevent yields on Spanish debt from rising to dangerous levels.

In less than a year, Rajoy has passed at least four different budget cut packages, including a raise in the Spanish income tax rate, a 3% hike in the Spanish value-added tax from 18% to 21%, the elimination of tax breaks for home owners and spending cuts for education and health care.  Furthermore, each of Spain’s regions are responsible for cutting their own budgets to just 1.5% of GDP.

Although Rajoy campaigned on a promise not to seek any bailouts from the European Union, like Greece has done, everyone in the EU believes it’s only a matter of time before Rajoy requests one — the European Central Bank has already provided emergency funding to prop up Bankia and other beleaguered Spanish banks in June.  Unlike with Greece, however, the most likely path for a Spanish bailout would be through a temporary credit line through the European Stability Mechanism, triggering the purchase of Spanish debt by the European Central Bank.

So on Sunday, when election results roll in from Galicia and Euskadi, here are six items to consider about how the results could affect the Rajoy government and Spain’s national politics: Continue reading Six ways in which Sunday’s Galician and Basque elections will affect the Rajoy government →

Basque Country, Spain

Which nationalist party will triumph in Sunday’s Basque Country elections?

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In addition to Galicia, Euskadi (i.e., the Basque Country) will hold regional elections on Sunday — and the chief question is which of the two major nationalist groups will win the largest plurality of the vote. 

As with Galicia, polls in Euskadi have been relative stable since elections were called last month, and the top two parties have been the longstanding nationalist Partido Nacionalista Vasco (the Basque Nationalist Party or the EAJ-PNV — in Basque, the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea), and the largest and most organized leftist Basque nationalist coalition to contest regional elections, a group of ezker abertzalea, or “patriotic left,” joined together as Euskal Herria Bildu (EHB).

The latest polls show that the Basque Nationalists would win 33.3% of the vote, amounting to between 24 and 26 seats in the  75-member Eusko Legebiltzarra (the Basque parliament) while the abertzale would win 24.5% and around 20 seats, although some polls have shown an even closer race between the two.

As such, it is expected that either the two nationalist groups will form the next governing coalition in Euskadi or, alternatively, the largest party in the Basque parliament will form a minority government, relying on external support from other parties.

The emergence of a unified abertzale is the most fundamental shift in the election from past elections, and the election will follow one day after the one-year anniversary of the ceasefire signed by the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), ending the armed leftist/nationalist struggle against the Spanish government.  For many years, radical leftist nationalist parties were actually banned from participation in Spanish elections because of actual or potential ties to the ETA — the largest party in the coalition, Sortu, which formed in 2011, was allowed to participate in elections by Spain’s Constitutional Court only in June 2012.

The current leader of the Basque Nationalists, Íñigo Urkullu (pictured above, top), certainly seems the favorite to become lehendakari (president) of Euskadi.  The former party leader in Biscay, the traditional stronghold of the Basque Nationalists, Urkullu became party leader in 2008, and has served sporadically in the Basque parliament since the 1980s.

The leader of the abertzale coalition is Laura Mintegi (pictured above, bottom), a relative newcomer to Basque politics.  Mintegi has been a professor at the University of the Basque Country for the past three decades, and is also a Basque novelist.  Mintegi is a native of Navarre, the region neighboring Euskadi with a predominantly Basque-speaking north and a Spanish-speaking south — the union of Navarre, or at least northern Navarre with an independent Euskadi has long been the goal of the  abertzale. 

Given the tense background to the various nationalist movement, what’s been most striking throughout the campaign is that both leaders have emphasized a relatively calm approach to greater Basque autonomy and/or independence, especially in contrast to the populist and nearly bombastic nationalism that Catalan president Artur Mas has suddenly adopted.  In line with the traditional moderation of the Basque Nationalists, Urkullu has not called for Basque independence, but rather for ways to renegotiate a new regional deal with Madrid, and he has spoken in vague ways about the failures of Spanish federalism.  Both opposition parties have tried to draw out Urkullu for his post-election plans; although the Basque Nationalists (and the abertzale) seem keen on harnessing the energy of pro-independent Basques who are heartened by the sovereignty movement in Catalunya, Urkullu has been more subdued than coy about potential Basque independence.

For her part, Mintegi is clearly pro-independence, but she and her allies have taken pains to distance their approach from Mas’s — Mintegi has emphasized that any referendum on independence would require widespread Basque political and social consensus and would have to comply with existing legal conventions:

Continue reading Which nationalist party will triumph in Sunday’s Basque Country elections? →

Catalunya, Spain

Mas calls early elections in November for Catalunya amid growing calls for independence

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Artur Mas, the president of Catalunya (pictured above), called early regional elections yesterday, which are set for November 25, and which will now follow two other key regional elections in October — in the other two ‘nationalities’ of Spain, the Basque Country and Galicia.

The decision brings to the forefront of Spanish politics the question of Catalan independence during a period in which Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy is trying to balance increasingly harsh budget cuts against an economy mired in recession and 25% unemployment, trying to keep yields on Spanish debt from climbing too high (which surpassed 6% again this week) while also keeping his pledge never to seek a bailout from the European Union (a pledge that Rajoy seems increasingly unlikely to keep).

Mas’s decision amounts to the latest ploy in a game of chicken between Madrid and Barcelona, despite the fact that it’s a dangerous time for Spain (and for the eurozone) for either to be playing any such game.  After a month in which the eurozone seemed largely on the right track — a pro-European election result in the Netherlands, the European Central Bank’s decision to buy eurozone debt, the German constitutional court’s decision to endorse the European Stability Mechanism and optimism on Greece’s continued membership in the eurozone — a Catalan/Spanish showdown could spook bondholders into another round of eurocrisis.

The elections come more than a year early — elections were not due until November 2013 — and they come after contentious negotiations between Mas and Rajoy over a bailout for Catalunya.  At a time when many regional governments are struggling, Mas’s regional government is seeking a rebate of up to €5 million for Catalunya and a ‘fiscal pact’ under which Catalunya could levy its own revenues to be used solely in Catalunya.  This comes in the shadows of strident pro-independence sentiment, with up to 2 million Catalans participating in pro-independence marches (pictured above) on September 11 earlier this month (that’s Catalan’s national day).

If Mas’s Convergència i Unió (CiU, Convergence and Union), a center-right and autonomist party, wins the election on the strength of a pro-independence wave, and if it garners an absolute majority in the 135-member Catalan parliament (the Parlament de Catalunya), Mas will have more leverage with Rajoy’s national government — and it seems likely that Mas and other Catalan nationalist parties will champion a referendum on either greater Catalan autonomy, a full declaration of Catalan nationhood or actual Catalan independence from Spain.  Some polls now show over 50% of Catalans support independence, which has risen dramatically during the Spanish financial crisis of the past three years — just as Germans balk at sending money to shore up Greek and Portuguese (and Spanish!) finances, Catalans balk at shoring up broader Spanish finances.

If he wins, though, the danger is that Mas will become the unlikely champion of an independence movement that is moving faster than he might otherwise have liked.  The snap elections only risk fanning the flames of Catalan independence further out of control of Mas, Rajoy or anyone in Spanish or Catalan politics.

Rajoy, who certainly has enough headaches of his own, has taken a largely conciliatory public stance, even as he looks for ways to isolate Mas at the federal level — in the broad fight between Mas and Rajoy over concessions to Catalunya, Rajoy has the support of his own party, the center-right Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party) and the opposition leader, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the leader of the national center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), as well as many of the regional presidents, who blanche at Catalunya getting a better deal than their regions.

Catalunya, the second-most populous region in Spain, with 7.5 million people and one of three ‘nationality’ regions (like the Basque Country and Galicia), has as strong a regional identity as the Basque Country — both have their own language and their own culture that were subdued during the Franco era.  The current surge in support for Catalan independence comes from the view that Catalunya, as Spain’s wealthiest — and most indebted — region, has subsidized other (read: lazier) regions that have mired Spain in its current austerity/recession trap, and that money transferred from Catalunya to the federal budget is money that could be better spent shoring up the Catalan budget.

Essentially, Catalan politics since the end of the Franco era has been traditionally a battle between two major parties:

Mas’s CiU (technically it is a federation of two similar parties) essentially ran Catalunya from 1980 until 2003 under the leadership of Catalan president Jordi Pujol. Although it technically won a plurality of seats in the 2003 and 2006 elections under Mas’s leadership, it won nearly an absolute majority in 2010, with 38.5% of the vote and fully 62 seats, just six seats short of such a majority.

The Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC, Socialists’ Party of Catalunya) is the major center-left party in Catalunya, but remains much more federal in nature — it’s the Catalan variant of the national PSOE.  It controlled Catalunya’s government from 2003 to 2010 in coalition with two smaller parties.  It lost a significant number of seats in the prior 2010 election and holds 28 seats currently after receiving just 18% of the vote.

In response to Mas’s latest push, the PSC has called for a federal system, like in Germany (a call that has been met with something far less than enthusiasm from Rajoy’s government).

Meanwhile, five smaller parties also hold seats in the current Catalan parliament and will vie for support in the November elections: Continue reading Mas calls early elections in November for Catalunya amid growing calls for independence →

Basque Country, Spain

Snap Basque elections may return nationalists back to regional government

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With Europe expected to face its most tense times yet this autumn in its three-year-running eurozone crisis, and with Spain expected to seek a bailout from the European Union in the coming months, the Basque Country — a key autonomous region in Spain — is headed to the polls in October.

Patxi López, the president (or lehendakari) of the Basque government (pictured above), called early elections Tuesday.

The election for the 75-member Eusko Legebiltzarra (or Basque parliament) will be held on October 21.

So what’s likely to happen? And what will it mean for Spain?

Essentially, the fight will come down to a four-way fight: (1) López’s federalist Basque socialists, (2) the federalist conservatives, (3) the traditional Basque nationalists and (4) a new leftist coalition of Basque nationalists.  For now, at least, the chances that López will continue as lehendakari of the Basque Country currently seem slim.

López became lehendakari after the 2009 regional elections, when his party, the Partido Socialista de Euskadi – Euskadiko Ezkerra (the PSE-EE, or the Socialist Party of the Basque Country) joined in a coalition with the Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party).  The López-led coalition marked the first time in the three decades of democratic elections in the Basque Country that the region had not been governed by the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (the Basque Nationalist Party or the EAJ-PNV — in Basque, the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea).

That coalition unraveled after the PP won the Spanish general election in November 2011 — the local PP leader Antonio Basagoiti demanded that López not use his position to oppose newly-installed prime minister Mariano Rajoy, who has accelerated budget cuts at the federal level.  López, however, has opposed Rajoy’s planned cutbacks, especially as regards health and education.  Without PP support, López’s government commands just one-third of the seats in the Basque regional parliament.

The election will be held the day after the anniversary of the permanent ceasefire agreed with the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), an armed Basque nationalist group that had engaged in many shootings, bombings and kidnappings.  That ceasefire, agreed by then-prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a political ally of López, was one of the final landmarks of the Zapatero government before the Rajoy government replaced it.  López is certainly hoping that voters will have that ceasefire on their minds on voting day, and that they will give his regional government credit for greater security and stability.

In 1978, the Basque Country — like Catalonia and Galicia — was granted the status of a nationality within Spain, as Spain wrote its new constitution, lurched toward democracy and began to emerge from the brutal and federalist four-decade dictatorship of Francisco Franco.  But sentiment for autonomy and/or independence runs strong in the Basque Country, and that sentiment has all too often turned violent in the past, even after 1978. Continue reading Snap Basque elections may return nationalists back to regional government →