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Spanish government on the ropes after social spending denied
By Raphael Minder
Madrid: The Spanish government is teetering on the brink of collapse as the dispute over the status of Catalonia blocked passage of a national budget significantly increasing the chances that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will call an early general election.
Sanchez, one of the few Socialist leaders left standing on the European political stage, was hoping to use his budget to increase social spending and address the inequalities that have accompanied Spain's economic recovery.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez arrives in Parliament in Madrid for the vote.Credit: AP
Instead, Sanchez, who leads a precarious minority government, is now facing a decision on when to call new elections — a seeming inevitability — after Catalan legislators withdrew their support, trying to force the issue of independence for their region back to the fore of Spanish politics.
For Spain, and indeed all of Europe, a new round of political turbulence could hardly come at a worse time. The Continent already faces the challenge of Brexit, as the British divorce from the European Union is called, with a deadline of March 29 looming.
Elsewhere, from Eastern and Central Europe to Italy to the hinterlands of France, populist forces continue to test the very cohesion of the bloc, both on the streets and in the halls of power.
Spain, by comparison, was shaping up as a relative bright spot. But a return to elections would most likely reveal a fractious and increasingly polarised political landscape that makes Spain less the exception than the rule in Europe today.
Pro-Catalonia independence supporters protest in Barcelona's Catalonia square on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Spain stood out as "a rare beacon for Social Democrats across Europe", as well as one of the few large members of the European Union led by a government committed to more European integration "in the midst of Brexit and fracture in Italy," said Pablo Simon, a politics professor at the Carlos III University in Madrid.
"We're now seeing that Spain, on top of the issue of Catalonia, has just the same problems as the countries around us, in terms of fragmentation and parties that struggle to maintain credibility and form solid alliances."
Given the growing polarisation in Spain, Simon added, a snap election could produce "all sorts of scenarios, including a new period of complete blockage."
Spain is bracing for the nation's most sensitive trial in four decades of democracy this week, with a dozen Catalan separatists facing charges including rebellion over a failed secession bid in 2017.Credit: AP
Indeed, Sanchez and his Socialist party came to power only by a thread in 2018, two years after the country held two inconclusive national elections and political parties haggled for nearly a year over who should run the government.
In the end, Sanchez formed unwieldy alliances, including with Basque and Catalan nationalist parties, to oust Mariano Rajoy, the conservative prime minister, in a parliamentary vote of no confidence and form his own Socialist government with only about a quarter of the seats in Parliament. That vulnerability, ever-present since Sanchez took office in June, finally manifested itself in Wednesday's budget vote.
Legislators turned down the government's plan by a vote of 191-158, with one abstention. It was the first time since 1995 that the Spanish Parliament had rejected a government's budget.
Sanchez left Parliament without taking questions, but his budget minister later acknowledged that the government considered its mandate to be contingent on having a budget for 2019.
Under Spanish law, the next national election was to be held by mid-2020 in any case. But it seems almost certain that voters will instead return to the polls before the northern summer.
Recent opinion polls suggest that the current opposition parties could win enough votes to form a right-wing coalition government.
This time around, as Spain has shifted from a two-party system to a much more fragmented political landscape, a national election could be even more unsettling and unpredictable.
Recent opinion polls suggest that the current opposition parties could win enough votes to form a right-wing coalition government. At the same time, a far-right party, Vox, has emerged on the political stage for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s.
In December, Vox achieved its electoral breakthrough in an election in the southern region of Andalusia, in part on concerns over a recent rise in number of migrants coming from Africa.
New elections would be a test of Vox's viability and potential role as a kingmaker at the national level. The party also wants to recentralise Spain and has a front-line role in the landmark trial of 12 former Catalan leaders before the Supreme Court in Madrid, which started on Tuesday.
Alongside state prosecutors, Vox's lawyers filed their own set of charges against the Catalans, who are accused of rebellion and sedition in connection with the 2017 referendum and the region's subsequent declaration of independence.
Sanchez's own prospects are unclear, but in the past he has demonstrated sharp survival skills. In 2017, he was ousted as leader of his party, but just a year later he had not only retaken the helm of his party but also become prime minister.
The debate over Sanchez's defeat focused less on his spending plans than on his handling of the Catalonia issue — highlighting the power that territorial conflict has to shape national politics.
Catalan lawmakers turned their backs on Sanchez after failing to persuade him to consider holding a second independence referendum, after the region held one in October 2017 that was ruled unconstitutional and that Spanish police sought to block.
Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont attends a news conference in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday. His pro-independence colleagues are on trial.Credit: AP
Upon taking office, Sanchez pledged to renew dialogue with the governing pro-independence Catalan politicians, in an effort to end a crisis that reached boiling point in 2017. He soon met with Quim Torra, Catalonia's separatist leader, who also took office in June.
But their talks got nowhere and Torra recently warned that his party would not approve a new Spanish budget unless Sanchez considered holding another referendum, this time with the agreement of the central government in Madrid.
Sanchez's government rejected this proposal as political blackmail, insisting that such a referendum was incompatible with the Spanish Constitution.
For even opening the dialogue, some right-wing politicians labeled Sanchez as a traitor to Spanish unity. At their urging, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Madrid last weekend, demanding a new election and denouncing the prime minister's handling of Catalonia.
A Spanish National Police van, believed to be carrying Catalonian politicians and activists, arrives at the Spanish Supreme Court in Madrid on Wednesday.Credit: AP
After the budget vote, Pablo Casado, who replaced Rajoy as leader of the opposition Popular Party, told a news conference that an election was unavoidable, calling the budget setback "a vote of no confidence against Mr Sanchez."
The New York Times