Not a good night for Spanish Socialists

by Guy Hedgecoe, Madrid

Although Pedro Sánchez's [Spanish] Socialists have emerged as winners having suffered only slight losses in this election, the overall result is not a positive one for the acting prime minister.

With Podemos having lost some ground and Más País securing only a handful of seats, there is no clear left-wing majority.  The Socialists' arch-rivals on the right, the PP, have recovered many of the seats they lost in April's ballot.

If the country's longstanding political stalemate is to be broken, Mr Sánchez might have to seek the support of the PP [centre right], or else a third election in the space of one year could beckon.
Meanwhile, the huge surge by the nationalist Vox party makes it the country's third political force and it will now find it easier to set the agenda on the right. That is likely to hinder any attempts by Mr Sánchez to seek a conciliatory solution to the Catalan crisis.

The April election ended in deadlock, with parties failing to form a coalition by a September deadline, thus forcing Sunday's election.


To form a coalition now, they would need to form alliances with smaller, nationalist parties, analysts suggest.

Meanwhile, the PP and Vox could seek to make the most of their gains.

One PP politician said Prime Minister Sánchez should "start to think about going", given the early results.

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