Spanish election: socialists win amid far-right gains for Vox party

Spain’s ruling socialists won the most votes but fell short of a majority in Sunday’s snap general election, a contest marked by the breakthrough of the far-right Vox party and a disastrous performance by the country’s traditional conservative party.

Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) won 123 seats, the conservative People’s party (PP) 66, the centre-right Citizens party 57, the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos and its allies 42, and Vox 24.

Despite it being the country’s third general election in under four years, turnout was 75.8% – well up on the 66.5% two years ago.

Sánchez hailed the result and the high turnout as proof of Spain’s desire to move forward and reject the reactionary policies of some of his rightwing opponents.

“We made it happen,” he told supporters in Madrid, echoing the PSOE’s campaign slogan. “We’ve sent out the message that we don’t want to regress or reverse. We want a country that looks forwards and advances.”

However, the PSOE will still need to seek the support of other parties to reach the 176 seats necessary to form a government in Spain’s 350-seat congress of deputies.

Even with the support of Unidas Podemos and related groups, it would still be 11 seats short of a majority and would need the help of smaller regional and nationalist parties.

Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, has already shown enthusiasm for a deal with the PSOE. He said that while his party would have liked a better result – it dropped 29 seats on the last election – “it’s been enough to stop the right wing and build a leftwing coalition government”.

The PSOE’s triumph – it picked up 38 more seats than at the last general election in June 2016 – came amid the continuing fracture of the Spanish right.

Vox performed slightly below expectations, but has still managed to become the first far-right grouping to win more than a single seat in congress since Spain returned to democracy after the death of General Franco in 1975.

The PP, by contrast, experienced its worst ever results as its support collapsed and it haemorrhaged 71 seats. Speaking before the vote, the party’s leader, Pablo Casado, had called the election the country’s “most decisive” in recent years.

Although Casado had ruled out resigning in the event of a poor showing, the pressure on him will be mounting as the party conducts its own postmortem on his failed strategy of trying to outflank Vox and Citizens by lurching further to the right.

The PSOE’s victory was described as “ephemeral” by Vox, whose far-right MPs are headed for congress.

The party’s leader, Santiago Abascal, said Vox had lived up to its promise to begin what he called “a reconquest of Spain” – a reference to the long campaign against Moorish rule, which concluded in 1492 and culminated in the expulsion of Spain’s Jews.