Michael Reid on the 2023 General Election in Spain

I'm sure you know that in the local elections here in Pinoso yesterday (28 May) Lazáro, the current Mayor and his socialist PSOE party, hung on to power with 8 seats. There were 3 seats for the right of centre Partido Popular and 2 seats for  the far right Vox. At the Regional level the Socialists lost control of the Valencian government. In general the PSOE took a pasting, as did the far left Unidas Podemos, with all its many variant names.

Today the Spanish President/Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a General Election for July 23rd. Unless you are Spanish or Nationalised Spanish then you won't have a vote. We foreigners generally only get to vote locally.

I saw this summing up of the situation on Twitter. It was written, in Twitter like style, by a bloke called Michael Reid. He mentions his book at the end so, given I've pinched his article I left the book plug in. I thought it was pretty good. I might not agree 100% but as a summing up in 450 words or so it's excellent. I thought other immigrants might be interested too.

Just in case you don't know ETA was a Nationalist Terror Group in the Basque Country.

Spain: To try to explain Pedro Sánchez's decision to call a snap election for 23/7, a thread on Spanish politics, which have become a complicated world of coalitions. 

A two-party system has been replaced by two blocks, plus assorted nationalists and regionalists. To became Prime Minister in a censure motion in 2018, Sánchez crossed a red line set by previous Socialist leaders, building a parliamentary alliance with Catalan separatists and Bildu, the post-ETA party, and in 2020 forming a coalition government with far-left Podemos. Meanwhile the base of the mainstream opposition People's Party (PP) had splintered into three, with Ciudadanos a would-be liberal party towards the centre and Vox emerging on the hard-right, initially in response to Catalan separatism.

Sánchez governed fairly effectively at first, dealing with the pandemic crisis and strengthening the welfare state. But to hold his coalition together, he veered left last summer, pushing through badly drafted Podemos laws on sexual consent, trans and animal rights. To keep his Catalan allies happy he also approved ad hominem changes to the penal code to prevent further trials of separatist leaders. All this alienated many more centrist Socialist voters as the local elections showed.

The PP won 31.5% of the vote, the Socialists 28.1%. Not a landslide but enough for Socialist-led coalitions to lose power in at least 5 and probably 6 of the 9 regions they were defending, as well as losing mayors in iconic Socialist cities such as Seville and Valladolid. Ciudadanos was wiped out yesterday. But the far-left, too, is starting to fall apart, split between Podemos and its former allies by a power struggle between Pablo Iglesias, its founding leader, and his successor Yolanda Díaz. Bildu, which has yet to make a full criticism of ETA's terrorism, made gains in the Basque Country, where it is challenging the moderate Basque National Party, and Navarre, even though several of its candidates had formerly been imprisoned for ETA killings or woundings. The PP did well, but it will depend on Vox in several places to form local administrations. 

And that is behind Sánchez's calculation in calling the snap election. Because if the PP allies with Vox it is hard for it to gain many other allies in Spain's increasingly fragmented parliament.The snap election is a bold gamble typical of Sánchez. He clearly senses a better chance of assembling a parliamentary majority now than later. But it is his riskiest bet: inflation has hurt Spaniards, moderate Socialist mayors and regional leaders blame him for defeat. The election will be very close, but the right starts as narrow favourites to form a government. 

For more background, see my new book "Spain: the Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country." Thanks if you've read this far.

Personal bias

Watching the TV news in Spain on Thursday afternoon. Thinking about the untrammelled stupidity of it all. About the actions of men, and it always seems to be men, like Putin and Sergey Lavrov sending people to kill and be killed. Wondering who is making money from this because behind almost every indecent act someone is making money.

Back at the news the next item was that the Partido Popular (PP) in Castilla y León had done a deal with VOX to form the regional government. It's not on the same scale but it is on the same spectrum of human wickedness. It's the first time that VOX has actually been in a coalition government. It's the first time since the restoration of democracy in Spain, in the period after Franco died, that the far right has actually been in government. It may be the first but it probably won't be the last.

I'm not sure how genned up on Spanish politics you are. I try to keep up but sometimes I despair because, every now and then, there is some event that those in the know know and I don't. Well at least I didn't till I did. There's just been a palace coup in the PP for instance and, until the moment it happened, I thought that everyone in that party loved their leader. Apparently not. All the journalists told me, after it had happened, that it had been on the cards for ages and that everyone had seen it coming. Not me.

Anyway. The basic plot of Spanish politics is easy. There's a traditional left wing and a traditional right wing party, a growing far right party, a fading far left party plus a crumbling centre. Oh, and lots of regional parties.

On the left there's the long established PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the Spanish Labour party if you will. They're not that left really but they remember to talk about poor people every now and again. They don't forget Bill Clinton's campaign message "It's the economy, stupid" so they try not to upset the people with the real power too much or too often. Their problem is that they don't have a parliamentary majority. They are propped up by a coalition with Podemos. Podemos are to the left of the PSOE. Podemos are not that keen on kowtowing to the money men so they give their coalition partners a lot of gyp. Even with Podemos the PSOE still don't have a clear majority and they have to prop up each crucial vote with a rag tag collection of parties.

Podemos, as I've said before is further to the left than the the PSOE. For some people there is an equivalence between the nutcase left (Podemos) and the nutcase right (VOX). Podemos, formed in 2014, was born from a popular political uprising that said it didn't trust politicians at all. As soon as they got a few people elected though they stopped talking about radical alternatives and elected a party hierarchy just like everyone else. They also subsumed the remnants of the communist party. As everyone else clamours to show how pro Ukrainian they are this bunch got into bother for saying that sending weapons, going to war, wasn't a good thing. Podemos is losing voter support all the time. The PSOE and Podemos keep having little fallings out because, from time to time, Podemos stands up for something it believes in - like a decent minimum wage or rent controls - whilst the PSOE think this will alienate their more right leaning members and it wants to pick up the remnants of the next bunch, Ciudadanos.

Ciudadanos is a party in the centre. They started well, back in about 2006, but it's all gone wrong and basically, they're a spent force. They had a bit of a power struggle in their ranks a few years ago which did for them as they forgot to stay central. Instead of continuing to broker this concession from the right and that concession from the left they drifted right. Now nobody remembers why they voted for Ciudadanos instead of just continuing to vote PP.

The PP, the Partido Popular. The sensible right, the Conservative Party. They are a post Franco party with roots in a bunch called Alianza Popular but the PP, as such, was born in 1989. Like the PSOE this lot have been in power a couple of times. They're just in the middle of a meltdown at the moment. Their young (ish) leader had a dust-up with a young (ish) woman who heads up the Regional Government in Madrid. Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the Madrid president, is dead popular for doing that Boris thing, the Donald thing, of saying whatever comes into her head. The idea is to make real people think she's a real person too and not a scheming politician. As a result of that internal dispute the leader of the PP is in the throes of resigning and he's about to be replaced by a steady hand on the tiller politician from Galicia. Nothing is decided yet but if it doesn't happen, if he's not the next leader of the PP, then the drinks are on me.

Then there's VOX. They're a bunch of racist, misogynist, radical right wingers who came into being in 2013. They couch their hatred in dodgy logic. They don't say they think black people are worse than white people but they do complain about immigration, not immigration per se, illegal immigration. Those are the people who clamber over border fences and cross the Med in toy boats. You know what colour illegal immigrants are don't you? Or they say they don't think it's fair to centre on the violence against women, after all women menace men too, so what we should centre on is violence in general. VOX are gaining in popularity. This means that the PP is careful not to stray into territory where they may appear to be too liberal so as not to lose the most right wing of their supporters to VOX.

Then there are lots of regional parties. Some are there on a single issue - fair deals for rural areas is big at the moment for instance - but most are well established regional parties particularly from Cataluña or The Basque Country. There are left and right leaning parties in amongst the small parties, there are parties who want independence for their region and groups that have historic links to terrorism. If you're British just think SNP or Plaid Cymru or Sinn Fein with a bit of Caroline Lucas or George Galloway thrown in.

So we've got the political spectrum which goes from issue parties through regional parties on to left, right and centre parties.

The structure is straightforward too. At local level there are the town halls. Spain still very much votes for personalities rather than parties at the municipal level.

Next up is the Regional Parliament - Valencian Community, Andalucia, Basque Country, Cantabria and so on. The Regions are very important in Spanish politics. It's they who take care of the services that affect people all the time, like health and education. The presidents of the regions are often referred to as Barons (most of them, obviously, are still men with grey suits) because just like the bunch that made King John sign the Magna Carta they have a lot of political clout at all levels.

Finally the National Parliament, the Congreso de los Diputados. This is the one that meets in Madrid. Just like in the UK it has two "houses". The difference from the UK is that both the upper and lower houses are elected. The deputies, just like British MPs, but elected in a completely different way via a party led system of proportional representation, are the rank and file, everyday politicians who do as their party leaders tell them. The upper house, the Senate, like the Lords, is used to park politicians and to reward loyal service. There are actually some real politicians in the Senate too who do their bit in keeping the country running.

Perhaps I should have heeded the advice to never talk about politics or religion!

Another talking politics post

It's strange how the same thing has more or less value depending on your own thoughts and when you have them.

I was listening to some high up politician from Navarre (an area of Spain) on the wireless. She was going on about how her right of centre party had done well because it had picked up more votes in the last election. I won't extrapolate on her model by pointing out that her party came second. Instead I'll pick up on her complaint about a Catalan party that probably holds the key to the formation of the next Spanish Government. The party in question are Catalan separatists, they want some form of autonomy, nationhood even, for their region.

So the Navarre woman says her party's votes give them legitimacy. She argues that Cataluña is an integral part of Spain. By her own reasoning the people who live in Cataluña are Spanish and, in Cataluña this separatist party got sufficient votes, enough to make them potential kingmakers. But, for the woman from Navarre, the party that won most votes, and is looking to form a government, shouldn't talk to this separatist party because their votes are less valid than some other votes. She didn't try to suggest that the winning party's votes were bad votes, worth less than votes for her party, but she did argue that the separatist votes were worse; tainted votes, less valuable votes, wrong votes. I listen to this and wonder why the journalist interviewing her doesn't point out this massive contradiction, this illogical behaviour.

I hear, time and time again, politicians pointing out that certain things can't be talked about because they are unconstitutional. If the law says that Spain is indivisible there can be no conversation about it being divisible. That would be illegal. But, worldwide, lots of things that used to be legal are now illegal and lots of things that were legal are now illegal - pit bulls without muzzles being one example and Elton John and David Furnish being another. Changing laws, changing constitutions, happens all the time.

In 1933 a Republican (left wing) government in Spain introduced a law of "Vagos y Maleantes" the Law of Layabouts and Thieves. Basically this law said that if you were a ne'r do well you could expect trouble - trouble if you were gypsy or gay or workshy or uppity about working conditions or lived in a dodgy council estate and sold scrap. Over the years this law became associated with the Dictatorship, with Franco, but it was there before him and, with a changed name and all sorts of modifications it was still there in 1995 - twenty years after Franco drew his last and descended into the fiery pit. That law was dropped in 1995 because, somehow, people became to believe it was wrong and bad and made no sense. For 62 years though it was law. It was right. Now it's wrong. Just like the Constitution is right and the Basques and Catalans are wrong.

Good votes, bad votes, legal things, illegal things, fixed positions, immovable barriers. I've heard that humankind is on a collision course with disaster. I wonder how that happened?

Honestly I started writing about garden hoes

You'll remember we had a general election in April and regional and municipal elections at the end of May. The trend was that the socialists, the PSOE, did well, the far left, Podemos, did badly, the traditional right, PP, plummeted and the centrists, Ciudadanos or Cs, did well but not as well as they hoped. The new far right party, Vox, won a substantial number of seats but without the huge surge they were expecting.

The municipalities have now been sorted out with their councils constituted, the regional governments are nearly all done but the first attempt at forming the new national government won't start till July 22nd. Greased lightning it is not.

Spain, has generally, since the return to democracy, had a two party state. More accurately two big players plus a number of important regional movements and some smaller national parties. Recently the maths had changed. Deciding who might govern a city, a region or a country became some sort of "what if" arithmetic challenge.

Now I'm not up to keeping tabs on all of the regional and town hall discussions but the impression I get is that this sort of manoeuvring is going on all over Spain. The fragmentation of the vote has tended towards a version of political Sudoku that has allowed people to get into power simply by perming their seats in the most illogical way often with a contemptuous disregard for voter intention. You know the sort of thing. A party takes a thrashing, it loses half of its old seats but by banding together with some strange bedfellows it can cling on to power. The obvious "winners" have not been able to consolidate their moral victory with a clear majority of seats in the local council or regional parliament.

Our town borders on Murcia so we notice what happens there. Murcia is a good example of this political wheeler dealing. Since 1995 Murcia, the Region, has had a conservative government. In the recent elections the socialists got 17 seats in the regional assembly narrowly beating the conservatives with 16. The conservative PP had 22 last time. Podemos went down by four from 6 to 2, Ciudadanos went up from 4 to 6 and Vox came from nowhere with 4. Given your point of view you could decide to stress the move to the left (the PSOE won), to the centre (loss of seats for Podemos, more seats for Ciudadanos) or to the right (new seats for Vox, a still solid vote for the traditional PP right and an increased vote to the right leaning centrists of Ciudadanos). You can also choose to complain about the proportional representation system, Cs got 6 seats with 150,000 votes yet Vox only got 4 seats despite getting 143,000 votes. Then you start to look for alliances.

The majority to control the Murcian Regional Government is 23 and so the parties have been dealing. It looked as though the PP and Cs were going to form the government with Vox backing them at vote time. But there was a problem in other locations, away from Murcia, and Vox, suspecting that they were being diddled out of any power, suddenly decided not to support the PP. That meant the potential coalition in Murcia has fallen apart for today at least. Exactly the same is happening in Madrid.

Oh, and something else that I really don't understand is the part that Ciudadanos has been playing in this game. Being simplistic about this the Cs have usually been considered to be centrist. But, for some reason best known to themselves, Ciudadanos this time has decided to be right wing. They campaigned on the right and they have said that they will never do deals with the socialists. It's not a stance I understand. It seems to me, given that the vote is so fragmented, if they stuck to the centre they would be in the perfect place to deal. Without compromising their principles, without letting down their voters, they could ask both the left and the right if they'll give them the things they want, the things they promised their voters. Whichever side offers the best deal gets their support.

I'm sure I read something about that in Politics for Beginners, Chapter 1.

Oh, and honestly. I started to write about weeding by pushing rather than pulling but some strange force gripped my keyboard fingers.

Making one cross

It's election time in Spain. The local and European elections were on the cards, programmed in on the calendar for May from long ago, but then the Central Government, headed up by Pedro Sanchez, couldn't get its budget through parliament and so was left with little option but to call a General Election. On Monday of this week the President of our region in Valencia decided to bring forward the regional elections and to hold them on the same day as the General Election, April 28th.

As I listen to the news there seems to be a qualitative difference between the politics I'm used to and what's happening at the minute. It all seems very personal, very combative. It's more like squaring up for a shouting match or a brawl than a political debate. No actual fisticuffs to date though!

You may or may not remember that Spain had two General Elections very close together in late 2015 and mid 2016. In both cases the conservatives gained most seats but they couldn't manage a clear majority. Eventually, in October 2016, Mariano Rajoy, the then leader of the conservative Partido Popular or PP, pulled a minority government together. In June 2018 one of the highest courts in Spain handed out lots of sentences in a big corruption case. The court said the PP was implicated directly in that corruption. As a result Pedro Sanchez's socialists orchestrated a vote of no confidence. It was supported by a whole host of disparate political parties and that was the end of Rajoy. He jacked in his job and went back to being a property registrar. Sanchez became President.

For years and years the two big parties in Spain have been the Partido Popular, PP, the conservatives, and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE, the socialists. There has always been a good smattering of nationalist parties particularly from Cataluña and the Basque Country and the vestiges of the old communist party always picked up a few seats too. That two party structure started to fall apart when a left wing group called Podemos did well in the 2014 European elections and shortly afterwards a right/centre group called Ciudadanos, which had been present in Cataluña for a while, gained ground on the national stage. In the last two general elections it has been four big players plus the nationalists.

On top of this splintering on the national stage there are the Catalans. Back in 2017 they organised a second referendum on independence. None of the safeguards were in place for a fair vote and the referendum had been banned by the courts beforehand  but, somehow they have managed to produce a situation where anyone outside of Spain sees them as the innocent victims of a brutish and almost totalitarian government. The politicians involved in that declaration of independence were locked up soon after the referendum and not given bail. Some of the Catalan politicians foresaw that possibility and fled the country. Holding those politicians in prison, on remand, for so long hasn't done Spain's democratic image much good. The jailed politicians are actually in court now.

It's difficult to be objective about Cataluña. My view is that the independence politicians are a bunch of petulant children who are quite unable to have any conversation that doesn't start from the premise that their birthright has been stolen from them and that Cataluña should be an independent nation now. So far as I can see they haven't actually done any politics for ages - economy, education, health and the like - because they spend all their time talking about being oppressed and bullied. Obviously there are other schools of thought.

The nationalist Catalans did support the socialist censure motion against Rajoy but, when it came to budget time, they refused to help the socialists a second time unless Sanchez talked to them about Independence. Sanchez said we can't have talks with a pre-set condition of talking about Independence and the Catalans said talk to us about Independence or you won't get your budgets. The Catalans knew that their reaction would mean the fall of the socialist government so I can only presume that they think they are going to get on better with the PP and Ciudadanos. Now there's a bit of clear thinking for you. Even by trying to talk to the Catalans the right of centre parties continually called the socialists out saying that they were negotiating with rebels and betraying the Spanish people. In fact Ciudadanos and the PP keep blathering on about imposing central government rule in Cataluña. Under much more pressing circumstances, when the Catalans actually declared unilateral independence, Rajoy used an article of the Spanish Constitution to impose direct rule but it only lasted as long as it took to organise local elections and get the next regional government in place.

Without the Catalans and other nationalist politicians in the Basque Country the socialists couldn't raise the support to get their budgets approved. Without a budget the government couldn't do the things it wanted to do. It was an impasse and the only real way out was to call a General Election which is exactly what happened.

The last time I saw opinion polls the Socialists were out in front. In their short time in office they've got stuck in to doing lots of things that have been on the cards for ages. The fact of doing something has cheered up their long time supporters and brought on board some of the ditherers. They're having a tough time at the moment because, with the election called, they have decided to use their dying days of office to enact some legislation by decree and the other parties are calling this an electoral strategy.

Second up were Ciudadanos. They have a good looking youngish bloke in charge. They're pretty right wing and they are all for taking over Cataluña but they too seem to put their money where their mouth is. They managed to leverage some things they wanted to see done out of the last government and their Catalan leader comes across as level headed and articulate woman. So they cheered up their natural sort of supporters and took lots off the PP.

The replacement for Rajoy as leader of the PP  is also a smart youngish bloke. However he seems to be ill informed and stupid. He's talking about rolling abortion laws back to a 1985 law (nobody quite knows why he's talking about abortion as nobody else is) and he seems to be quite happy to lie, not the usual sort of political manipulation of the facts, but the Donald Trump sort of direct untruth. When the PP had slumped to third in the polls he said that it was because the socialist government now had charge of the statistical office and so they'd made up the figures.

Finally there's Podemos, the left wingers who subsumed the old communist party into their ranks and then let it wither away. They've been involved in lots of infighting and they've failed to support pragmatic and popular changes which they have tried to explain ideologically. Complicated and subtle political messages don't make easy news and the right has been able to exploit the lack of agreement on the left.

So socialists popular and out in front, Ciudadanos popular and in a strong second, the PP trailing badly and hampered by poor leadership with Podemos entrenched in navel gazing and on the verge of extinction. The likelihood is that nobody will get a majority. The most obvious outcome is a rightist coalition but nothing is ever straightforward when it comes to Spaniards doing deals so no crystal ball gazing at the moment.

There's also another factor. Down in Andalucia at the end of 2018 the socialists, who had held the region since democracy was re-established, didn't win an outright majority for the first time. The PP and Ciudadanos did a deal to take over and govern the region but even then they didn't quite have enough votes to do it. The wild card was a bunch of right wingers called Vox. They want to suspend the Catalan Government, in fact they want to re-centralise all government (Spain is basically organised federally), to centralise education, to beef up support for "family values" (they don't much care for feminists), close frontiers and mosques and they want to increase the influence of Spain in Europe. Basically then usual sort of idiotic populist nonsense that we've heard from the USA, Brazil, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and an increasingly long etcetera.

Vox doesn't have any parliamentary seats but it does have a Twitter and an Instagram account. And they are on a roll. They are doing what Trump does. They do not argue in the time honoured tradition of proposals and counter proposals. They publish something bad, nasty, homophobic, sexist, jingoistic or whatever in a short, easily digestible form and right thinking people rise up against them and denounce them on the social media. The debate actually helps abhorrent politicians to spread their poisonous messages. We see their misinformation and twisted analyses on Facebook or in WhatsApp groups because all of us have "friends" on Facebook who we would steer clear of in real life or at least we'd steer clear of the subjects that turn up on social media. Those people believe the slurs, repeat the false information and they simply attack anyone who is not with them. If we respond the nonsense gets more exposure and if we don't respond we are doing less than we should. It's a bit tricky.

And, down in Andalucia, the two, run of the mill, right wing parties, the Partido Popular and Ciudadanos, were perfectly happy to get into bed with the far right politicians of Vox. If I were to use that crystal ball my guess is that, after the vote on April 28th, that's what we will be looking at on a national scale.

Now, where was I?

I wrote a couple of articles for the TIM magazine which were never published. This is one of them. It was called Spanish Government

The current form of government in Spain dates from the 1978 Constitution which was drafted three years after the death of General Franco.

Central government takes care of the “big things” like foreign affairs, external trade, defence, justice, law making, shipping and civil aviation but in many areas it shares responsibility with the regions - for instance in education and health care.

The National Parliament, las Cortes Generales, has two chambers. The lower house, equivalent to the UK Commons, is the Congress of Deputies and the upper house, something like the Lords, is the Senate. The lower house is the more important. It has 350 members, against the 650 in the House of Commons. The deputies are elected in the 50 Spanish provinces and also from the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Each province is an electoral constituency and the number of deputies it returns is population dependent. The big parties contest all the constituencies but there are also important regional parties which only field candidates in their home provinces. Voting uses a closed list system – if you vote for the party you vote for all their candidates. The number of seats is divvied up by a complicated proportional representation system. This means that there are several deputies for each province and no “constituency MPs”.

The number of senators changes slightly with population - each province elects four senators. The political parties put forward three candidates and voters choose up to three names - from the same party or from different parties. The four candidates with the greatest number of votes are elected. The legislative assembly, the regional government of each autonomous community, also designates one senator by right and a further senator for each million inhabitants. A different system is used in the Canary and Balearic Islands. Usually there are around 260 senators.

The official result of a general election is made public five days after the poll. Parliament meets and the deputies are sworn in. Next, the King, it's always been a King so far, meets with the heads of the parties and asks one of them to try to form a government. The government has to be agreed by the parliament as a whole. That's a simple enough process when one party has a clear majority or when a simple coalition will do the trick but the last couple of times, with no clear winner, the process has been very messy.

The leader of the party of government becomes the President of Spain with their official residence at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid. The President decides what vice presidents, ministries and ministers are required to run the country The people chosen form the Council of Ministers, akin to the British Cabinet

The Constitutional Court ensures that any new parliamentary laws are constitutional and comply with Spanish International agreements. The judiciary, overseen by the General Council of Judicial Power, is independent of government and has both national and regional structures

All of the 17 autonomous communities have their own president, government, administration and supreme court. The majority of funding for most of the regions comes from central government. The autonomous communities have differing devolved powers based on their history, on ancient law and local decisions. All of them administer education, health, social services, cultural and urban development. Several of the communities, like Valencia, have separate linguistic schemes.
Each of the 50 provinces, for instance Alicante, has its own administration, the diputación, that is responsible for a range of services.

The municipalities, the town halls, are headed up by a mayor supported by the councillors of the ruling party or coalition. Town halls are responsible for local services from tourism and environment through to urban planning and social services. The official population of the municipality, the padrón municipal, is the basis of the electoral roll and so the basis of this whole structure. Oh, except for the Monarch who gets his or her job simply by being born.

Well we have a government

As I type I'm listening to the radio. They are voting for the investiture of the President of the Spanish Government.  The man who's up for President, Mariano Rajoy, is a right winger from the Partido Popular, the conservatives. The process involves reading out the name of each deputy who then says yes, for Rajoy, no against Rajoy or abstention. Rajoy needs a simple majority to be elected. The only way he can get his majority is if the PSOE, the socialists, don't vote against him and, in fact with the number of abstentions already recorded he's in.

The abstention of the socialists is either a tactical move to avoid a third general election or a complete betrayal of principal depending on your point of view. The socialist party has lost its leader during the in fighting about what to do. Even to the last minute there were two options. Abstention of all of the socialist ranks or just the minimum abstention to let Rajoy win. The latter option would have allowed the ideologically opposed an easy way out but the socialists went for party orders, general abstention. The ex socialist leader resigned rather than abstain or break ranks. The Catalan socialists are sticking to the no vote, against Rajoy, as they said they would. There was a moment when it sounded as though one of the socialist heavyweights, Patxi López, had broken with party orders and voted against his party line of abstaining but it was just a bit of a misunderstanding. Eight socialists couldn't bring themselves to support, or not oppose, Rajoy though and voted no.

There they go. He's elected. Months and months of a caretaker government and two general elections are now just a historical footnote.

Political comment

I'm finding that I'm shouting at the telly and the radio more often recently. The politicians are talking more nonsense than usual but, more than that, one of them seems to have simply decided that none of it is really anything to do with him.

We don't have a proper government at the moment but we do have a Caretaker Government,  a Gobierno en funciones, run by the Partido Popular. Mariano Rajoy is the less than charismatic leader of the PP and Caretaker President. He's one of those blokes who appears to have almost no political personality. From time to time the news programmes show him out for a bit of exercise and he just looks wrong in badly co-ordinated sports clothes. If he abandons his suit for a jacket and trousers the jacket is too blue and the trousers too black. When he doesn't wear a tie he reminds me of that picture of John Major meeting the troops and wearing a ribbed pullover to ride around in a tank - completely out of his element. But to be fair, when I saw Mariano interviewed on a "come over to my house and let's cook something" type interview show he seemed a perfectly likeable bloke

In the UK the Speaker of the House of Commons is a party politician but, once they become Speaker, they try to be impartial. There is a similar position in the parliament here and Ana Pastor, from the same party as Rajoy, is currently the Presidenta del Congreso de los Dipuatdos. In the last, very short lived parliament, the equivalent position was taken by a bloke called Patxi López from the other side, the PSOE. When the Government has to explain itself before the MPs or diputados, it's the Presidente del Congreso who arranges the debate. Patxi tried, in the face of objections from the PP, to organise the debate when MPs wanted a Government response but when Ana should have done the same thing she prevaricated. There were mumblings about her lack of impartiality. The thing they wanted to talk about was an ex PP Minister, who had resigned, because he was suspected of having dodgy Panamanian bank accounts, taking up a position with the World Bank with obvious backing from the Caretaker Government. Mariano Rajoy said about that one that it was nothing to do with him. If Soria (the politician was called José Manuel Soria) wanted to apply for a "civil service" type job that was his right, completely up to him. I can see why Soria was interested though with a pay rate of 620€ per day. Rajoy had nothing to say about the impartiality of the Presidenta.

The ex Mayor of Valencia is a woman called Rita Barberá. She is one of hundreds, nay thousands, of PP politicians accused of corruption. In her case it's to do with illegal funding of her party. There are plenty of other politicians from the other parties being investigated for corruption but the majority stakeholders are definitely the PP. Even the party itself is caught up in a case for dodgy funding of a rebuilding programme at party HQ. But back to Rita; one of those larger than life characters that politics throws up from time to time. When she was defeated in the local elections to be mayor of Valencia her party popped her into the Upper House, the Senate. 

Spanish politicians have a sort of political immunity. They can't be tried by lower courts, just the Supreme Court, so that getting a prominent politician into the dock is a lengthy process. Rita resigned from the PP a couple of days ago but she is refusing to give up her seat in the Senate to maintain that protection.

As you may imagine the press wants to know what her (ex) party and particularly the Caretaker President have to say about the case. For days Mariano said nothing at all. He just kept quiet. This is one of his favourite tactics. Say nothing, see how things are going, maybe it will all go away. When he did speak his answer was that as Rita was no longer in the party he had no authority over her and it was absolutely nothing to do with him. Silly me, I thought that a President might have something to say about political corruption especially when the case is about illegal funding within his own party. I must be mistaken

Rajoy is a master of inaction but, to be honest, none of the leading politicians seem to be up to making a decision at the moment. We have a four way split. The centre left can't talk to the hard left because one is for talking with the Catalans about self determination. The party that doesn't seem able to decide whether it is left or right leaning has thrown its votes in with the PP this time though last time they did a deal with the Socialists. In return for their votes they demanded several concessions. One of the biggest was that the PP stomped on corruption. They haven't had a lot to say about Rita's shenanigans. The smaller regional parties can't join with either of the big parties again because of the stuff about Catalan independence. One of the two, apparently, workable options is that the centre left just abstains and so lets Rajoy back in. They have said no several times though. They say they can't stomach another Government headed by Rajoy. The other option is that Rajoy goes, that someone else takes over but his side are staying loyal at the moment.

I should mention that the PSOE, the biggest left leaning party, has a big corruption case going on at the moment too. That one involves two former Presidents of the Region of Andalucía. Those two did resign their political office and they are in court and fighting their corner. I don't remember feeling the need to shout at the radio when that story first broke.

Off to the polls

General election today in Spain. I'm sure you know. The fact that polling day is Sunday here and Thursday in the UK piqued my interest. Do you know that the UK and India are the only countries in the world where the vote is on a Thursday? Worldwide, Sunday is by far the most popular day.

We had elections back in December. The old party duopoly that has existed more or less since the return to Democracy here collapsed. The Partido Popular, the most right wing of the big parties, won most seats in the parliament but they didn't have anything like a majority. Their leader is a bloke called Mariano Rajoy. He looks a bit doddery and he's got a beard. One of his favourite tactics is to wait and see. The Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the standard left wing party that stopped being left wing years ago came second but only just. The lowest vote for them in their recent history. It was the first election for their newish leader called Pedro Sanchez. He looks pretty dynamic, big smile, reasonable dress sense. One of his favourite tactics is to sound resolute and complain about other politicians. Next up was Podemos. This group are sometimes described as anti system, sometimes anti austerity and sometimes as communists in the Venezuelan, Cuban mould. Their leader is a bloke with a pony tail and a wispy beard in the stereotypical social worker university lecturer style. His method is to be forthright and just a normal sort of person even if that person has got a bit different ideas - like your vegan pal. This lot like to repeat phrases over and over again so they stick with the voters. They suggest something radical to solve most things but then tend to soften the radicalism. The media don't like Podemos much. Last up but still with a sizeable block of votes was Ciudadanos. There was a lot of debate when they first started to show in the opinion polls as to whether they were left or right. The general view seemed to be sort of right leaning but when the horse trading started after the December 2015 elections they teamed up with the (sort of) leftist PSOE. Their man, Albert Rivera looks like the sort of boy that your mum hopes your sister will hook up with. He knows when not to wear a tie with his suit. Trying to think of his political tactics I can't remember him doing or saying anything. Must be my memory.

Anyway so in the end, apart from Ciudadanos teaming up with the PSOE nobody would budge so nobody had enough seats to form a government. There are a few regional parties and there were possible combinations but policy differences stopped it happening. and that's why it's back to the ballot box.

For this election the one major difference is that Podemos have partnered up with the stump of the old Communist Party. Spain has a proportional representation system but it's territorial so, as in the UK, parties can still pick up lots of votes but not turn those into seats. Izquierda Unida found itself in that position last time as the fifth most voted party but with just a couple of deputies. The new electoral coalition Unidos Podemos might gain an advantage from that and the talk is as to whether they can unseat the PSOE as the second most voted party.

Pinoso, last time out, was solid PP. I don't get a vote of course though Podemos say they would like to give me one. Brexit may give me one too but in a more roundabout way! I went in to town to have a look at the voting stations. They all seemed to be doing a brisk trade even though the prediction is for a low turnout because of election fatigue. Obviously election campaigns have changed recently. Posters and public meetings are a bit old hat so it's difficult to spot obvious signs on the streets and although Twitter, Facebook and the media are alive with the stuff they would be, wouldn't they? In fact I've just realised that not a single Spaniard has mentioned the election today to me.

Anyway we'll know soon enough. Results overnight.

And the results were: The PP increased their majority. The PSOE came in second but with the lowest ever number of deputies. Podemos and Izquierda Unida got the same number of seats as before and came in third. Ciudadanos lost seats but came in a strong fourth. This was with about 98% of the votes counted so there may be detail changes. In Pinoso the PP won easily. PSOE second and Podemos third.

Nothing in particular

It's raining. It's rained quite a lot in the last couple of weeks. We've forgotten all about the drought which lasted from last winter through to a few weeks ago. Usually, though not today, it rains overnight which is very civilised. I can't pretend that it's warm but it isn't cold either - at least not outside. Generally we're into the mid to high teens during the day but with sun and blue skies so it feels pleasantly warm. Overnight we're down at 7ºC or 8ºC maybe. I expect it will turn cold in December, it usually does. The pile of leaves that have just started to clog our drive suggest that Autumn has finally arrived. And its getting dark just after six in the afternoon. Considering it will start to get lighter again just before Christmas that's not too bad. So outside, in the fresh air everything is as it should be. Inside the house of course it's miserable. On the front page of today's Alicante paper there's a headline which says that nearly half of the houses in Alicante province lack any form of insulation against sound, heat or cold. This statistical information is tied in to the introduction of energy efficiency certificates for dwellings a while ago. In our house the little windows, designed to keep out the beating sun of summer make our rooms dismal in winter and the uninsulated house with tiled floors, painted walls and badly fitting doors make it exactly the opposite of cosy. With the log burner alight the living room has been lovely and warm but all the adjoining rooms have a cold, musty feel. Getting into bed is quite unpleasant until you stop shivering.

In the news, corruption stories are everywhere. The health minister resigned this week. She was mentioned by a judge as being the direct recipient of goods bought with her husband's dodgy money. I heard lots of comments that it was like making the poor thing resign for having eaten poached game when she didn't know it was poached. Hmm. The same judge said the ruling PP or Conservative party had benefitted directly from dodgy funding but the health minister's boss, the national president, forgot about that when he stood up in parliament and said that corruption was not endemic. The last three PP party treasurers have all been in court, one is on remand and that one has accused the current president of taking illegal payments. I wouldn't like to give the idea that only the PP have their fingers in the till. Certainly on percentages they come out top but, down in Andalucia, there's a huge corruption deal about suspect redundancy notices which implicates two past PSOE or Socialist party presidents. And the independents don't want to miss out either. In Cataluña an almost mythical ex leader turns out to have a stash in Andorra and there was a case of illegal party funding a while ago that another key political figure somehow seemed to sidestep.

Back to our national president; he's a very strange president. Earlier this month a couple of million Catalans turned out for an illegal referendum on independence - the national president generally ignored that and sent something akin to the Crown Prosecution Service (if it's still called that) after the regional president for running an illegal poll. So much easier than arranging to talk about it. He's behaving the way I do when I need to talk to someone in Spanish on the phone. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation.

There are close on 2000 politicians currently charged with some level of corruption yet none of the promised anti corruption legislation has got past the committee stage. The politicians don't go easily either. None of them behave like people convicted of crimes. No sackcloth and ashes. Most of them spin out the process for ever with iffy legal arguments and expensive lawyers. The few who have been locked up argue about which prison they'd like. An ex president of one of the regions was in the sort of prison regime where you go home for the weekends and only put on your stripey suit every now and again. When people found out they got a bit indignant so a judge decided to withdraw those privileges. The ex politician appealed the decision. Another ex regional president who has been sentenced to four years in chokey still has body guards and an official looking car and has been asking the Central Government for a pardon - a real live get out of gaol for free card.

Yesterday I got a text message from the General Treasury of the Social Security on my phone to tell me that my petition to become a self employed person had been approved. In the past I've complained about the difficulties that people face who want to set up their own business here. People needed to have a hefty amount of cash behind them in the bank or at least some heavyweight backers willing to cough up if the business went pear shaped. Social security payments were high too with even the smallest business subject to a 260€ minimum payment from the first day of trading and before any tax committment. Anyway, for my new job, my new boss suggested that I should be self employed. This only made sense because now there is a sort of reduced charge sliding scale social security payment scheme starting at around 53€ for the first 6 months and then going 130€, 180€ and finally 260€ after two years. I thought it sounded like a good scheme. An incentive to get people to register and run legal businesses from the start rather than to start illegally and register only when the profits justified it. Nonetheless in my case I thought it sounded a bit flaky and there were plenty of disadvantages as well as advantages but the accountant told me that at least it was all legit. He did all the work. All I had to do was to sign on the dole and hand over some basic ID documentation and he did the rest. Then a text message. Nearly as strange as our president.