Socialists decide Spain’s political fate in showdown

Madrid / AFP

Spain’s divided Socialists gathered in Madrid on Sunday for a meeting widely expected to help finally unblock the country’s ten-month political impasse.
The party’s policy-setting federal committee is likely to lift a veto that has prevented the conservative Popular Party (PP) forming a minority government. The meeting follows weeks of in-fighting within the Socialists, Spain’s second largest party.
The Socialists (PSOE) have been weakened by dismal election results and internal strategy disagreements amid Spain’s efforts to form a government after two inconclusive general elections.
The divisions came to a head earlier this month when high-ranking Socialists amenable to a conservative government—so as to avoid a third election—forced party leader Pedro Sanchez to resign.
Sanchez opposes acting conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who came to power in 2011 and whose four-year term was marked by a series of corruption scandals.
Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) won elections in December 2015 and again in June this year but without enough seats to rule alone.
The PP therefore needs the main opposition Socialists to either support its government or abstain in a parliamentary confidence vote.
With Sanchez out of the way and the party run by an interim executive, most of the delegates at Sunday’s meeting were expected to support an abstention.
“Most Spaniards, more than 65 percent, don’t want to go back to the ballot box and it’s the same among Socialist voters,” said lawmaker Ignacio Urquizu. If the Socialists decided to abstain from another parliamentary confidence vote on Rajoy—who lost one in September—could hold another one next week, with some confidence of victory.
Still, divisions persist within the Socialists.
“We are coming to the federal committee to support the ‘No’ against Rajoy and the PP,” Idoia Mendia, head of the Basque socialists, whose position is shared by their Catalan colleagues, said as he arrived at the party’s headquarters.