The Spanish electoral cycle of 2019: a tale of two countries

Abstract

In 2019 alone, Spanish citizens went to the polls at least four times – two general elections, European elections, local elections and, for some, regional elections. Moreover, in the 2016–19 legislature, the country witnessed a successful vote of no confidence that replaced a Conservative prime minister with a Socialist one; experienced an important constitutional crisis over the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence; observed the emergence for the first time of a viable far-right party; and ended with the first coalition government in the modern democratic history. The November 2019 election, the last in this long electoral cycle, left a fragmented and polarized political landscape and a left-wing cabinet – PSOE and Podemos – that does not have a majority in the chamber. This article presents the background, the results of the different elections and discusses how and why Spanish politics experienced a radical transformation likely to have an impact in the next years.

Keywords:

• Spain
• far-right
• polarization
• Catalonia
• fragmentation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marc Sanjaume, and Marc Guinjoan for their detailed feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Other recent reports in the Elections in Context series include Kosiara-Pedersen (2020) and Fernandes and Magalhaes (2020)

2 Under Parliamentary rules, to be named Prime Minister any candidate needs to obtain an absolute majority of votes from MPs (176 votes out of 350). If it is not reached, a second vote is held in which a simple majority of more yes than no votes is required. To understand the relationship between investiture rules and the overwhelming presence of minority governments in Spain, see Ajenjo (2015).

3 The question of the factor or factors behind this increase has been a matter of academic interest. For instance, Cuadras-Morató and Rodon (2019) and Bel et al. (2019) show that neither the economic crisis nor the economic recovery are associated with changes in support for Catalan independence. della Porta and Portos (2020) show that cross-class alliances were crucial in accounting for the surge of support for independence. Serrano (2013) shows that identity is one of the most important correlates of independence support.

4 Days before the referendum, the Spanish government deployed the Civil Guard and the National Police to Catalonia, seized most of the material to be used in the referendum (posters, electoral rolls…) and opened more than a thousand judicial procedures against politicians, members of the civil society and public officials.

5 Spain: Excessive use of force by National Police and Civil Guard in Catalonia, Amnesty International, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/10/spain-excessive-use-of-force-by-national-police-and-civil-guard-in-catalonia/ [Retrieved on 25 March 2020].

6 To know more about the voting behaviour in such an exceptional context, see Guntermann et al. (2018).

7 Source: Diari Ara [https://www.ara.cat/politica/porta-lEstat-decidir-dels-catalans_0_1649835034.html]. The only option that has not been attempted until now is a proposal to reform the Spanish Constitution. This option was considered but eventually discarded as most Spanish parties, except for Podemos, were against the referendum. Catalonia sends 48 deputies to the Spanish Congress (13.7% of the total). Pro-independence parties (ERC, JxCat and CUP) had 23 seats at the end of 2019 (6.6% of the total).

8 Democracy Index 2017: Free speech under attack, Intelligence Unit, The Economist https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=democracyindex2017 [Retrieved on 25 March 2020].

9 The Court’s ruling can be accessed here: http://www.poderjudicial.es/search/openDocument/a7bcdddcb750b1e4

10 This created some tensions within the party. In fact, even before the April election the unease within the party started to grow. Most notably, Podemos witnessed an internal fracture when Iñigo Errejón, one of the party founders, contested Iglesia’s leadership at the end of 2018 (and lost) and later ran in the Madrid local elections in May 2019 on a different political platform.

11 The dataset is available at the Institute’s website www.cis.es

12 Most of the Spanish population locates on the centre-left of the ideological spectrum (4.6 on a scale from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). Yet, this does not necessarily mean that left-wing parties automatically have an advantage, as many voters decide on the basis of valence issues, and turnout patterns are not homogenous along the scale.

13 Data belongs to the 2019 November election. Yet, if the data for the 2019 April election is used, the pattern is virtually the same.

14 According to the post-electoral poll, around a quarter of the Spanish electorate (24.1%) mention that the Catalan events had an impact on their vote choice.

15 To know more about why people voted for the far-right Vox, see Turnbull-Dugarte (2019). To see how Spanish parties use the second dimension to mobilize their supporters, see Pardos-Prado (2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toni Rodon

Toni Rodon is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He is also a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include electoral participation, political geography, comparative politics and historical political economy. [[email protected]]