Many things were unusual about the 23 July Spanish election – not least that it was held in the middle of summer, with much of the country experiencing scorching heat. But people went to the polls regardless, knowing there was much at stake: turnout, at over 70 per cent, was up on the previous election of November 2019.

There’s long been an idea in Spain that the country is inoculated against fascism, having endured the long trauma of the Franco dictatorship. But in the run-up to this election, Spain seemed headed, like many European countries, towards the normalisation of the extreme right and even its entry into government.

The snap election was called in reaction to the results of regional and local elections on 28 May, which saw the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP) win resoundingly, and the far-right Vox party enter regional governments in coalition with it. Castilla y León, Extremadura and Valencia, where the two share power, were feared to be the future of Spain.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Socialist Party (PSOE) responded by gambling that an early general election could mobilise a united left in the face of fears of the far right’s entry into national government. To some extent, his gamble paid off: Vox fell back and, at least for the time being, lost its chance to become part of government.

Now the winner may well end up losing, and the loser might end up the winner. Having won by a narrower margin than expected, and with Vox losing many seats, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo is unlikely to be able to form a coalition government. Current prime minister Sánchez has more coalition options and could try to piece together a government and stay at the helm. If neither succeeds, another election will have to be held within a few months, bringing a protracted period of uncertainty.

Winners and losers

The polls predicted a clear PP victory, but not by enough for it to govern alone. A strong performance was also expected from Vox, making it the likely source of the seats the PP would need to form a coalition, unless the PP gained enough seats to make minority government plausible.

But the polls were wrong – or perhaps the predicted results mobilised people to vote to try to stop Vox entering government. The PP’s victory was much tighter than expected: it came first with 33 per cent of the vote, translating into 136 seats – up from 89 in 2019, but still far short of the 176 needed for a majority.

The PSOE’s second place, with 31.7 per cent, was surely better than expected: having weathered the pandemic and the economic impacts of a war in Europe, it received a million votes more than in 2019 and gained two seats, up to 122. The reason it went from first to second place lay in the disappearance of a right-wing party, Ciudadanos, which fared so badly in the regional and local vote that it decided not to stand in the July election. Most of its votes migrated to the PP rather than Vox.

In third place, Vox was the biggest loser: its 33 seats were 19 down on its 2019 performance. The left-wing platform Sumar, which incorporates PSOE’s coalition partner Unidas Podemos, came fourth with 31 seats, four fewer than those held by Podemos.

There’s still the votes cast by Spanish citizens abroad, not a negligible amount, to be counted. These tend to sway left: since the mid-1980s, when these votes started to count, the PSOE has won them seven times, including in the last three general elections, with the PP and Podemos winning twice each. This time they may result in two or three extra seats for the PSOE, and perhaps one more for Sumar.

Culture wars

The state of the economy is often decisive in election outcomes – inevitably to the detriment of incumbents – when things are going badly. When the economy is perceived to be doing well, it tends to be less of a campaign issue. Spain’s economy is currently among Europe’s fastest-growing, inflation has subsided and its unemployment rate, once marked by catastrophic rates of youth unemployment, has declined sharply. The government’s rising star is its Labour Minister, Sumar’s Yolanda Díaz, responsible for popular measures, including a minimum wage increase.

There was some debate about affordable housing, with all parties offering policies to tackle the problem, but overall, the election campaign was about something else entirely. Much of it focused on the likely coalition partners of the two main contenders. The PP was questioned, including among its own ranks, for its alliances with Vox, while for the PSOE, controversy centred on its links with Catalan and other pro-independence parties.

Catalonia has a long-running independence movement, and its pro-independence parties have significant national-level representation. With the two-party system long gone, their seats can make a crucial difference when it comes to putting together a government. During the campaign, the right-wing opposition decried the PSOE’s parliamentary agreement with Catalonia’s Republican Left, a Catalan pro-independence coalition, as well as with EH Bildu – a Basque pro-independence party that includes some former members of the now-defunct ETA terrorist organisation. They also tried to capitalise on controversy over the government’s 2021 pardon of nine Catalan leaders, jailed for their role in a 2017 illegal independence referendum and subsequent unilateral declaration of independence.

Sánchez defended his government’s social achievements as well as its Catalonia policy, which appeared to pay off electorally, as the PSOE increased its vote in Catalonia, partly at the expense of pro-independence parties, which lost several seats.

But it was Vox that set the tone, determined to resurrect the spectre of anti-Spanish terrorism while creating a new monster in the form of sexual and gender diversity and equality. Ironically, the extremism of Vox’s approach likely ended up pushing many of its voters into the arms of the supposedly more moderate PP and helped the governing coalition close ranks in defence of hard-won rights.

The election campaign brought more of the usual Vox discourse, focused on rolling back laws that recognise rights – including the Gender Violence Law, the Abortion Law, the Equal Marriage Law, the Law on the Guarantee of Sexual Freedom and the Trans Law. But it also coincided with the inauguration of the regional governments elected in May, including those in which Vox now plays a role. Various acts of cultural censorship, including the removal of the rainbow flag from Valencia City Hall, offered a glimpse of what a Spain ruled by Vox could look like. Many didn’t like what they saw.

Open-ended negotiations

In Spain, forming a government at a first attempt requires an absolute majority of 176, but if no one wins the first parliamentary vote, a simple majority suffices in subsequent votes, as long as a sufficient number of deputies abstain.

During the campaign, the PP expressed its preference for governing alone, but never ruled out a coalition with Vox. Had it reached somewhere close to an absolute majority, it could have pressured the PSOE into abstaining to allow it to form a minority government on the promise of closing the door on Vox. But the results have removed this possibility.

The two major parties have both emerged stronger than they’ve been in a long time – but they still need the support of parties to their left and right. The most the PP could muster is 171 votes in its favour, but it’s to be expected that all 179 other votes would be against it. Nobody else wants to be part of or enable a coalition that includes Vox.

The PSOE can count on 172 – its own 122 and Sumar’s 31, plus 19 from the Basque, Catalan and Galician parties that have so far supported its government. That hands the key to power to Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), a right-wing Catalan party. JxCat would never support the PP, but if it was to abstain to enable a PSOE-led government, it insists on two conditions that seem impossible: a binding referendum on self-determination in Catalonia and amnesty for all those prosecuted for their role in the 2017 referendum.

For now, the situation is deadlocked. If no agreement can be brokered, fresh elections will be called, potentially giving rise to another campaign where anti-rights disinformation and hate speech will flourish as the far right makes a second attempt to enter national government. Uncertain times lie ahead.