Spain’s Conservative Popular party (PP) came first in Sunday’s EU elections, upping its share of seats in the European parliament from 13 to 22 – with 34 per cent of the vote. The Socialists (PSOE), represented by energy minister Teresa Ribera, avoided the drubbing many had predicted, coming second with 20 seats.
Between them, the PP and PSOE have won enough seats to dominate smaller parties for the duration of this EU parliament
A large gap separates these two frontrunners from smaller left- and right-wing groups, Catalan separatists and a curious new addition to Spain’s political scene. These parties secured between two and six seats in the new EU legislature. The real victor on Sunday, then, was the Spanish establishment. Between them, the PP and PSOE have won enough seats to dominate smaller parties for the duration of this EU parliament.
Still, one new Spanish party managed to achieve some success this weekend by tapping into distrust of the political establishment. Despite being less than a year old, Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF), or ‘The Party is Over’, now holds three of Spain’s 61 seats in the European parliament. It has the same number as Sumar, a leftist group which forms one half of the Spanish government. SALF is led by 34 year-old social media activist Alvise Perez, who spent time as a potwasher in Leeds and was formerly a member of the UK’s Liberal Democrats. Mobilising his 450,000 followers on Telegram, Perez managed to secure the 15,000 signatures needed to run in the EU elections in a fortnight. SAFL has yet to articulate any specific policies, defining itself solely in opposition to what it sees as a self-interested and corrupt establishment.
If Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez was apprehensive ahead of Sunday’s vote, though, it wouldn’t have been because of Perez’s new party. The PP and the further-right Vox, which came third and upped its share from four to six seats, had focused their campaigns on a corruption probe into Sanchez’s wife and a controversial amnesty deal he has made with Catalan separatists. It turns out that the PSOE leader needn’t have worried about those two factors, either.
The fact that the Socialists didn’t slip further down the EU rankings can be interpreted in one of two ways. It either shows that centrist and centre-left voters aren’t that bothered by the amnesty deal and the corruption allegations against Sanchez’s wife, or that they don’t think an EU election is the best way to register their discontent over domestic matters.
They would be right to discount the corruption probe: it’s a wafer-thin case, and so far lacking in any concrete evidence. Opposition to the amnesty deal, though, is widespread and cuts across ideological differences: a poll last autumn found that 70 per cent of Spaniards opposed it, including 59 per cent who voted for the Socialists in last summer’s general election. Perhaps that anger won’t really find an outlet until the next general election, although by that point the events in question may have faded from memory.
What of the grave ‘threats’ to democracy apparently posed by far-right and far-left parties? In Spain’s case, Vox’s slight increase in seats was far from being the surge that the EU establishment feared. It enjoyed nothing like the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. On the left, Sumar (the Socialists’ coalition partner) held onto its three seats and Podemos lost two of its three seats. The two pro-independence Catalan groups that contested Sunday’s vote now have six seats between them – a small showing, but one that won’t prevent them trying to put secession at the top of the agenda, just as they have done in Spain despite their minimal presence in the national parliament.
Spain is a strongly pro-EU country, so it might seem paradoxical that EU elections usually only generate a turnout of about 40 to 45 per cent. This year it was 49 per cent. Perhaps the country’s enthusiasm for the EU in general is diluted by its distrust of politicians, which has increased significantly over the last few years. The Spanish establishment might have won a victory in Sunday’s vote – but it has nothing to be complacent about.
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