‘All or nothing’: Spaniard Pedro Sánchez bets on early elections

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose career has been marked by near-death experiences and bold bets, made his boldest gamble yet by calling a snap general election the day after his reprimand by voters.

Sánchez adopted a tone of chastened humility as he announced a poll five months earlier than expected on July 23, saying that the defeat of his socialist party against the popular party in local and regional elections meant that it was necessary to “clarify” the will of the people.

But analysts say it is in his own interest to bring the vote forward from December, giving the shrewd political tactician a slim chance to shore up votes on the left while turning the specter of alliances with the far-right party Vox into a problem for the curator. PP.

“It’s a smart decision,” said Alicia Gil-Torres, political consultant and professor at the University of Valladolid. “It’s all or nothing.”

Yet, even if his chances of survival are better in a July poll, his party loss of territory on Sunday, the odds are stacked against him.

The first thing the snap poll does is prevent months of recriminations — and even potential challenges to Sánchez’s leadership — within the Socialist Party, which would leave it even more weakened come December’s vote.

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The potential for gut warfare is all the greater due to the bad blood Sánchez has fostered with his previous gambits.

The prime minister has cultivated a reputation outside Spain as a debonair international statesman. But some in his own party still see him as the politician who emerged virtually unknown in 2014 to win the leadership of the Socialist Party, or PSOE, to preside over two heavy electoral defeats before being ousted in a coup. of Internal State two years later.

“Nobody cared about him when he first left the PSOE,” Gil-Torres said. But after eight months in the wilderness, he captured grassroots support to regain leadership of the party in 2017 from a rival favored by his former prime ministers.

The following year he himself became prime minister under extraordinary circumstances, using a vote of no confidence over corruption to convince parliament to overthrow an incumbent government for the first time in Spain’s democratic history.

But his mandate was marked by the fragmentation of parties on the left.

José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Sánchez “might think he can capitalize on the weakness” of two left-wing parties to win their votes and bolster his own position among progressives.

One is Podemos, a once-electric political brand and its coalition partner since 2019, which performed poorly on Sunday and is tarnished by its association with a botched sexual consent law that resulted in shortened prison sentences for some sex offenders. . The other party is Sumar, a group founded this year by one of Sánchez’s deputy prime ministers, Yolanda Díaz, which itself aims to shore up leftist votes. He did not field any candidates in Sunday’s election and, seven weeks from now, he may not be fully prepared for a general election either.

But Torreblanca doubted the scheme would work. “Voters do not see the Socialist Party as an autonomous party. They see him as part of a pack,” he said – and which also includes controversial Catalan and Basque separatists. “Sánchez has no chance of being alone in power.”

Díaz de Sumar, who joined Sánchez’s coalition as a communist party member, tweeted on Monday: “Faced with [People’s party leader Alberto Núñez] The dark Spain of Feijóo, we want to win.

The other potential benefit of the early election for the Prime Minister is that it will shed light on the PP’s most difficult obstacle after the regional vote: the fact that he has obtained few absolute majorities in the legislatures – to with the exception of Madrid – meaning he will likely need coalitions or voting pacts with Vox to form governments.

A right-wing populist party, Vox is skeptical of climate change, protective of “Christian heritage” and critical of feminists and globalists. Socialists will try to use the specter of Vox in coalition with the PP at the national level to alienate centrist voters from the PP “and prevent people from abstaining”, said Pablo Simón, professor of politics at Carlos III University from Madrid.

The next few weeks will be the perfect time to do so as Vox and PP engage in semi-public negotiations over possible regional deals, a Conservative political play which the Prime Minister will turn into a central part of his campaign.

But Sánchez’s insight may not get him far. “The snap election is basically about trying to stop what would have been a disaster in December,” Simón said. “But it’s very difficult for him.”