The July 23 national election in Spain did not turn out as expected. [No clear victor in Spanish election as results defy predictions, by Jack Guy and Al Goodman, CNN, July 24, 2023].

Spain’s center-right Popular Party leads in Sunday's vote -- but no single party will emerge with enough support to governhttps://t.co/hfBPGjkqHX

— CNN (@CNN) July 23, 2023

It reminds me of the “Red Wave“ of 2022. Except in Spain, red represents the left and blue the right (see El Pais’s interactive map here).

What was expected was that the right would take control, through a coalition of the Partido Popular and the nationalist Vox party (see my Vox file here).

There was a lot of hysterical rhetoric about the likelihood of Vox being in the government. For example, an AP article was entitled Spain’s early election could put the far right in power for the first time since Franco.

Frequent references to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, victor in the anti-Communist Spanish Civil War, who died in 1975, were designed to scare people.

On the other hand, Yolanda Diaz, an official in the current government and leader of the far-left Sumar coalition, is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Spain, but the media have no problem with that.

The Guardian even dragged former British Labour PM Gordon Brown out of retirement to pontificate that Spain’s election is a key battle in the Europe-wide struggle against neofascism [July 14, 2023]. Wow! The struggle against “neofascism“! How dramatic!

As it turned out, the “far right“ fell short and no party or coalition currently has the majority.

How do you get your party or coalition to control the Spanish government? By having a majority in the Congreso, the lower house of Parliament.

When I was in Spain this past March, I saw the Congreso building myself. (My photo here). 

There are 350 seats in the Congreso, so 176 seats would be a majority.

In this election, the Partido Popular won 136 seats, and Vox had 33. So their total of 169 fell just 7 short of the 176 seats needed. So close and yet so far.

On the left, the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), party of current Presidente Pedro Sanchez, won 122 seats, while far-left Sumar coalition had 31. Their total of 153 seats leaves them even shorter of a coalition.

But there are 28 other seats, taken by various regional parties. The PSOE, Sumar and the Partido Popular are already fishing in those waters to cobble together a working coalition.

El País has a cool feature called the Calculadora de Pactos, with which you can cobble together any combination of parties you want and see if you have a majority.

When it’s all said and done, Pedro Sanchez of the PSOE may well remain in power.