Shaun Riordan | British (and foreign journalism in general) would do better to forget the obsession with their civil war narratives and focus on the economic, social and political issues confronting modern Spain. Explaining Spain´s electoral results in terms of the Civil War is no more relevant than explaining the Brexit vote in terms of the Battle of Britain, and just as misleading.
Juan Luis Manfredi via The Conversation | Election results in Spain leave a new normality to which we will have to get used.
Spain held its third national election since 2015 on Sunday. The socialist party won by a clear margin but fell short of an absolute majority in the national Parliament and will need to find coalition partners to form a government. “We will not put a sanitary cordon to anybody. Our only condition will be to respect the Constitution and advance in social justice,” PM Pedro Sánchez said.
Alvise Lennkh & Dennis Shen (Scope Ratings) | Political events in Spain (undecided), Portugal (stable) and Italy (divided) have implications for the three countries, visible in their divergent capacity to reduced the high levels of public debt.
Shaun Riordan | The other oddity of the debate was the almost complete absence of policy. Many commentators have already noted the absence of economic policy from the election campaign. Last night there was no mention of health or the key issue of further reform of the labour market.
Stephanie Kelly (Aberdeen) | The fragmented nature of the Spanish political system makes it unlikely that any party will secure an absolute majority to govern. Therefore, if a government is going to be formed after these elections – something that cannot be taken for granted given the fractured political system – it will be a minority or coalition government.
Shaun Riordan | Unless the polls are dramatically wrong, Pedro Sanchez´ socialist party (PSOE) will be by far the largest party after the Spanish general election on 28 April. Given that, there are three key questions for foreign observers: will the right wing bloc of the Partido Popular (PP), Ciudadanos and Vox secure an absolute majority of seats in the parliament? Will the combined vote of PSOE, the left wing Podemos and the Basque nationalists be sufficient to form a government without the support, active or passive, of the Catalan nationalists? How well will the far-right Vox do?
CaixaBank Research | The Spanish economy has spent four consecutive years growing above the Eurozone average. At the same time, the savings rate has fallen to historic lows. Although this would seem to suggest that households have limited room to manoeuvre in their consumption decisions if the economic context worsens, it is still too soon to draw this conclusion.
Joan Tapia (Barcelona) | As I write this article, three polls have been published – in three Spanish newspapers ABC, El Periodico de Catalunya and Confidencial – which practically agree. If there are no changes in the twenty days that remain before the elections, PSOE will be the largest party with more than 130 seats, far distant from the PP which will remain on 80-90 seats.
Ana Fuentes | Spain and the US are the only developed countries which are going to grow more than 2% in 2019 according to the IMF. On the case of Spain, exports, which were driving the country’s growth, have weakened, but domestic demand has grown. The risk premium is just below 100 basis points, compared to Italy’s 250 b.p. But beyond the data, the analysis is currently conditioned by the effect of the electoral campaign.