Accessing the Institutions: The Road to the Socialist–Green Alliance in Spain

Abstract

This article traces the strategic re-orientation of the Spanish Greens (Los Verdes) from a position of hostility toward the Socialists (PSOE) to one of collaboration that allowed them to gain parliamentary representation in the 2004 national and European elections. Drawing upon insights from the party politics literature, it schematizes a model and then proceeds to use it to provide a diachronic account of factionalist conflict within the ranks of the Greens and their close competitors, the structure of political opportunities, exogenous factors and their interrelationship, up to the point of the electoral agreement between the two parties. In concludes by highlighting the role played by the Madrid bombings in bringing the PSOE back into power and offers some projections about the future institutional access of the Greens.

Notes

¹ The electoral score of LV, since their first participation in national elections in 1986, has been on average, 0.84 per cent.

² LV formed an electoral alliance with two regional left-wing parties, ICV (Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds/Catalan Initiative Greens) and CHA (Chunta Aragonesista/Aragonese Assembly) which resulted in the election of two MPs from these parties in the 2000 general elections.

³ One may be tempted to argue that the anti-nuclear protests in Spain during the 1970s should award Spain a high score on the ‘intensive post-industrial conflict’ variable.

⁴ Kitschelt attaches the ‘borderline’ label to LLPs that maintain a strong commitment to their traditional clienteles and ideological repertoires. This sophism does not play a role in the ‘new politics’ classification used by Poguntke (1987, 1989) and Müller-Rommel (1990) since this type of party is compatible with the distinctive criteria outlined by these authors. In any case, IU can be seen as a ‘borderline’ LLP case due to the leading role of the PCE (Partido Comunista de España/Spanish Communist Party) and the simultaneous inclusion of small left-wing parties and post-industrial protest movements in its ranks.

⁵ Ramón Tamanes was a well-known academic and founding member of AEORMA (Asociación Española para la Ordenación del Territorio y el Medio Ambiente/Spanish Association for Territorial Arrangement and the Environment).

⁶ Confederal Councils are the decision-making bodies of LV in between congresses.

⁷ In contrast to IU as a whole, its Catalan equivalent IC although initially under the hegemony of the Catalan Communist Party PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya/United Socialist Party of Catalonia) managed to re-launch itself as a socialist party (Heywood, 1995: 209). ‘In contrast to the PCE, members of the PSUC replaced their party membership cards with those of the new alliance’ (i.e. IC) (Interview with Sergi Alegre).

⁸ The beginning of the so-called period of ‘Italianization’ of Spanish political life can be traced back to the beginning of 1990 and the accusations that Alfonso Guerra's brother was using PSOE premises for private business purposes, which led to the subsequent resignation of the deputy prime minister. By the time of the 1993 general elections, more corruption scandals, including the ‘Filesa affair’ where a group of front companies paid party bills with money obtained from businesses for fictitious work and commissions given to key party members in return for contracts to carry out construction work for Expo 92 in Sevilla, had come to the fore and two PSOE MPs were forced to resign (Heywood, 1995: 117–18).

⁹ Rather surprisingly, considering their weak electoral leverage, there were contacts between the PSOE militants belonging to its IS current and Jordi Bigas, to explore the possibility of support for a minority PSOE government should LV manage to achieve representation in the Congress of Deputies. A newspaper article went so far as to suggest that the PSOE may have offered LV, in exchange for its support, the portfolio of the Ministry of the Environment (Cabal, 1996: chapter 20).

¹⁰ The 6 per cent of references to post-materialist issues in the 1993 manifesto of IU appears to be a progressive decrease when compared to the 8 per cent in the 1989 manifesto and 7 per cent in the 1986 manifesto. However, this can be attributed to the great length of that manifesto and ‘its greater complexity, which crystallized in a large number of references to ecological and environmental issues in other sections of the manifesto, which were not counted’ (Torcal and Montero, 1997: 10).

¹¹ The D'Hondt electoral system is considered to work in favour of larger parties and to over-represent more traditional and thinly populated parts of Spain.

¹² See Ramiro Fernández (2002) for an informative discussion on these issues.

¹³ As a result the PSOE was bound in its policies by a pre-electoral accord with the Greens that committed them to some very serious environmental policy measures (Verdes de Andalucía, 2000).

¹⁴ LV candidates were to occupy places on PSOE lists in Madrid (for the Senate), Seville and Valencia.

¹⁵ See the resolutions adopted at the 2nd Federal Convention of LV-IV (Verdes-Izquierda Verde, 2002).

¹⁶ Allegedly this unexpected reversal of a governing party's projected electoral fortunes was caused by a text message that made its way to thousands of mobiles and led to thousands of people demonstrating outside the headquarters of the PP the evening before the elections (Prieto del Campo, 2005: 43).

¹⁷ See also, studies on the same issue by Chari (2004), Torcal and Rico (2004), Lago and Montero (2005).