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Spain

New PSOE leader Sánchez faces uphill struggle to unite Spanish left

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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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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.

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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? →

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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 →