Spain to go to the Polls Again After Budget Failure

Government sources have told Spanish media outlet, El Pais, that at Friday’s cabinet meeting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will announce the date of Spain’s 3rd general election in four years.

The decision by the Spanish leader to call for a snap election soon is a result of the defeat in the vote on the 2019 budget in parliament, after Catalan nationalist parties, PDECAT and ERC voted against the budget.

Spain’s previous Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from the Partido Popular was ousted in a no-confidence vote after a corruption scandal hit his party. Sanchez’s Socialists did not have enough votes in the lower house to form a government with the Marxist Unidos Podemos alliance, but it needed the support of the nationalist ERC and the PDECAT which together are 17 seats and Sanchez only had a 180-170 coalition.

ERC and PDECAT had been threatening to cancel their support for the government as Sanchez has not been putting Spain’s constitution up for negotiations in talks with Catalan separatist parties.

The separatists have also sought the release of the leaders of the previous separatist government after they held a banned referendum on independence which only saw 43% vote in a poll unionists boycotted as it was a vote in violation of the law. In December 2017 when voters went to the elections in Catalonia a record 79% of voters went to vote, and 47% voted for separatists, and 53% didn’t.

Pedro Sanchez and his coalition face a very tough battle trying to get elected by the Spanish voters as polling is showing that a right-wing coalition of the  Partido Popular, Ciudadanos and Vox would have a substantial majority in the lower house.