Last year there was a Spanish general election. It wasn’t very successful. No party got a majority. This subject hasn’t been discussed since then and I would like to put it out there.
There are four main parties in Spain: People’s Party, PSOE, Citizens and Podemos. These four parties tried to combine to get a majority. This was unsuccessful as they all had different opinions and couldn’t agree on anything.
The People’s Party (PP) is the traditional conservative party in Spain, equivalent to the UK’s Tories. PSOE is the traditional left-wing party equivalent to the UK’s Labour party. Citizens is a relatively new political party which hasn’t clearly positioned themselves but which would probably close to the centre of the political stage. Finally Podemos, which is a left-wing party born from the popular movement know as 15-M (as in 15th of March). Podemos brought millions of Spaniards onto Spain’s main squares to protest against the austerity policies of the PP government, imposed by Brussels and the ‘infamous’ troika.
After eight years of the conservative PP rule, the Spaniards went to the polling stations with mixed feelings; excitement because of the appearance of new political parties – Citizens and Podemos to mention but a few – and a feeling of anxiety because of the financial situation of the country. The results drew a new political map with no clear winner. It all came down to a long and tortuous series of meeting between the different political forces to try and create an alliance between parties which would allow them to form a stable government.
Spain were in a financial crisis thirty years ago and now they still are in one. This means there aren’t many jobs out there. The government is really important for Spain. As you see on the map, the south of Spain is poor so they vote PSOE (Labour) and in the rest of the country it is PP’s (Conservative). The yellow party is an inderpendence party for Catalonia. The elections in 2011 were totally different because PP got a majority. There will be an elections again to see who will be the next government.