Spain's knife-edge election is a bellwether for the next European Parliament

According to Vox, Spain’s new hard-Right force, today’s general elections are about the survival of Spain as a national entity. Most European observers, however, will be looking to see how strongly Spain’s forces of moderation can survive the first real assault of Right-wing, anti-immigration and slightly Eurosceptical populism the country has experienced. With no elections due this year in any of Europe’s biggest nations, all eyes are today on Spain as a bellwether for next month’s European Parliament poll, in which populist movements are expected to make a bigger impact than ever. Spain, despite its political fragmentation that has brought about this, its third election in less than four years, has been making solid economic progress in the past half-decade, while also putting order in its public finances. With unemployment still close to 15 per cent, the economy might have been expected to feature prominently in the campaign. But instead Spaniards have been beaten around the head with the strategic importance of the country’s first general election since the Catalan regional government’s unconstitutional referendum and declaration of independence in 2017. Despite the fact that his Socialist party (PSOE) minority government fell because Catalan pro-independence parties withdrew their confidence and supply support, the incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been accused of betraying Spain for trying to launch a negotiation process with Catalonia’s leaders. The main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) and liberal Ciudadanos have been joined in rage at Mr Sánchez’s search for a Catalan compromise by Vox, which polled just 0.2 per cent in 2016, but is expected to surge into Congress today with around a tenth of the seats. Spanish politics has been split into two blocs by the Catalan issue, with Mr Sánchez and his PSOE’s only hope of a stable coalition partner lying in the hard-Left Podemos. Ciudadanos and PSOE have previously sought coalition deals together, but the polarisation over Catalonia is such that the liberal party’s leader, Albert Rivera, prefers to look to Vox for support. According to polling, it is very possible that neither bloc will make it over the line. The PSOE-Podemos alliance could seek to woo pragmatic Basque nationalists, but Mr Sánchez will hope not to have to rely on Catalan parties again. While a Left-wing government could serve to take the sting out of the Catalan independence movement, the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox have competed to take the strongest line against separatism. All three back a prolonged suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy, plus measures to either ban or limit the political freedom of pro-independence parties. A third scenario is political stasis from an impossible hung parliament. This may not be the last general election in Spain this year.

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