Mataró, carrer del Carme, 15 mayo 2015. Foto JPQ.

Cosas de Financial Times.

[ .. ]

Financial Times, 25 / 26 mayo 2015. Confusion reigns after Spanish elections.

Todo está dicho con fina ironía muy british, en la que me reconozco: “No hay duda de quien ha ganado las elecciones locales y regionales en España: la más imprevisible confusión y fragmentación”.

España balcanizada, a merced de los minifundios ideológicos, 2.
España balcanizada, a merced de los minifundios ideológicos.

España: más incertidumbre, menos estabilidad, fragmentación moral.
España, del duelo a garrotazos a la fragmentación inmovilista.
El cambio que viene, no solo en Barcelona.

Goya, Quiñonero y las crisis de España, 4.

España.

[ .. ]

May 25, 2015 4:25 pm

Confusion reigns after Spanish elections

By Tobias Buck in Madrid

There is little doubt as to who emerged victorious in Spain’s regional and local elections. In no particular order, the winners were: confusion, fragmentation and unpredictability.

Spain’s ruling Popular Party lost heavily on Sunday, but it remains the biggest political force in the country. The opposition Socialists did even worse than four years ago, but will probably drive the PP from government in several centre-right bastions. Two political newcomers, Podemos and Ciudadanos, made an impressive entry into regional and local assemblies, turning Spain from a two-party regime into a four-way contest. But they remain kingmakers not kings — strong enough to block others from taking power but too weak to take power themselves.
As conflicting claims of victory kept piling up, the most striking conclusion was probably this: even after the official results were published, voters in the 13 regions that held elections on Sunday had little idea which sides would be in government and which in opposition. After decades of stable majorities and single-party governments, political power in Spain’s regions will now have to be shared between bitter political rivals.
Based on current polling, it is a scenario that will probably be repeated at the general elections later this year, a thought that already appears to be unsettling investors in Spanish equities. On Monday, the Ibex-35 index of leading Spanish shares fell more than 2 per cent, with energy and bank shares faring especially poorly.
“It is not clear who will govern in the majority of the regions, and it is hard to see what coalitions will ultimately emerge. Everything now depends on the negotiations between the parties over the next few weeks,” said Pablo Simón, professor of politics at Carlos III University in Madrid.
Like other analysts, Prof Simón pointed out that all the major parties had cause for both cheer and caution: “The PP can claim that it is still the most-voted party, but it has never had such precarious majorities. In terms of power, it has never been so weak.”
The political left, meanwhile, made strong gains overall, but largely because of the rise of the anti-austerity Podemos movement. “There has been a shift to the left, but it is a left that does not speak with a united voice,” said Prof Simón.
Antonio Roldan, a political analyst at Eurasia Group, pointed out that Podemos and the Socialists had enough votes to govern in a string of regions currently ruled by the PP.
But Mr Roldan cautioned that Podemos had little incentive to throw in its lot with its main rival on the left: “Deals between the two will be very difficult. It is not clear at all that Podemos wants to hand the government to the Socialists — it could hurt them nationally.”
For Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, Sunday’s vote offered another sobering blow, along with worrying confirmation that the country’s accelerating economic recovery is still not helping his PP at the ballot box. Unless coalition talks produce a complete upset, the centre-right bloc is likely to lose power in Castilla-La Mancha, Valencia, Extremadura and several more regions. Adding up the PP’s performance in local elections across the country, Mr Rajoy’s party took just 27 per cent of the vote, down from 38 per cent in 2011.
In a surprise setback, the PP is even heading for the opposition benches in the town hall of Madrid — after 24 years in control of the Spanish capital. The new mayor, in all likelihood, will be Manuela Carmena, a 71-year-old former judge and human rights activist, who led a recently-founded alliance of leftist groups. Similar grass-roots candidates were also on course to oust PP mayors in a string of other important cities, as in Catalonia, where anti-poverty crusader Ada Colau of Barcelona in Common is on course to snatch the regional capital from the hands of CiU, the Catalan centre-right party.
Spain’s other political insurgent, the centrist Ciudadanos party, did not do as well as expected. Even in its strongest regions, it came only a distant fourth. Analysts argue, however, that Ciudadanos could still play a crucial role after Spain’s general elections later this year, because it is the only party with whom the PP can realistically obtain a governing majority at the national level.
“It would be wrong to interpret what happened as a revolution, but it would be just as wrong to ignore the strong message of change that these results have sent,” an editorial in the El País daily said on Monday. “It is hard to see how the two-party system can continue to serve as the axis of Spanish politics.”
Mr Roldan offered a similarly nuanced conclusion: “After 35 years of complete dominance, the two-party system is broken. We now have four parties that matter. But it looks like the established parties are the ones that will still be in control.”