Spain’s centre-left Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was the decisive winner in last night’s general election, securing a 12-point victory in a fragmented political landscape. With 29 percent of the vote, his Socialist Party capitalised on a higher-than-usual turnout as voters mobilized against the threat of a major breakthrough from the extreme-right.
In a contest that saw candidates cast one another as an existential threat to the nation, a fragmented right bloc failed to make gains where the left parties united against the insurgent far-right Vox party. The prediction the Right may mobilise new demographics that included abstaining voters around Spain’s fraught national question - having labelled Sánchez a “coup-plotter” and his allies as the enemy within - ultimately missed the mark. As veteran Spanish journalist Pedro J Ramirez put it, “many Spaniards feared [a] Vox [government] more than they feared [regional] independentists”.
