The Party That Was Taken Over

Spain knows a thing or two about the coup d'État. The country knows it as a "golpe de Estado". It knows about failed ones, too. 1981 was the famous one. That of 1982 was less famous. They swept it under the carpet. The failure had occurred on the eve of the general election. It was designed to prevent a socialist government coming to power. Everyone knew that Felipe González would win. Some were determined that he wouldn't.

González duly won the election. He was president (prime minister) for fourteen years. For the most part, these were the glory years for PSOE. They were the glory years for all of Spain's post-1975 democracy. A charismatic leader gave the country hope and pride. It clambered aboard the European gravy train; largesse flowed south in shoring up this nascent, socialist-led democracy - a country undergoing a renaissance.

It ended, as it tends to, in scandal and acrimony. The Partido Popular came to power. When it failed to win in 2004 - a result widely attributed to its mishandling of the Madrid bombs - in came Mister Bean: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Everyone, including himself, was surprised. ZP, a decent, honourable man in a John Major-ineffectual sort of way, was no González, and he was to have his Jim Callaghan moment. Crisis, what crisis. The PSOE government poured money it didn't have into building its way out of the crash. This just made the eventual wreckage worse. ZP departed, to be replaced by Mr. Greybeard, Uncle Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. He never stood a chance. The Rajoy era was to begin.

This background is important in understanding what has been happening over the past few days. Susana Díaz, the Andalusian president, is said to have launched a coup d'État, one designed to bring down Pedro Sánchez. There are different reasons for her having done so, of which her own ambition is just one. The crisis that has engulfed PSOE is attributed to two key factors - its disastrous election results while under Sánchez's watch and its stance over a future government. There are others.

PSOE has never recaptured the glory years. It remains a hostage to the González era. He was the party's figurehead, the national figurehead. It was PSOE who really effected the "transition" in Spain. A coup attempt could not derail that movement. It was a party of its time, but scandal, complacency and uninspiring leadership were to make it a party identified with a corrupt two-party system. The "casta" of PSOE and the PP was all that Podemos really needed. Enter, therefore, the charismatic Pablo Iglesias.

PSOE's polling has been massively affected by the emergence of Podemos and Ciudadanos. The same can be said of the PP, but the PP has remained comparatively strong where PSOE has been enfeebled. But there has been a more fundamental dynamic. PSOE has become a party directed by another - Podemos. Not directly, but its whole thinking is now determined by the factions who are for or against Podemos. It has been taken over by an outside influence. It has become a shell of a party in which even the pro-Podemos faction is uncertain. Sánchez is one of them.

He has vacillated greatly. But at the heart of his latest apparent shift - one in a Podemos direction - is the accusation that enabling the PP to govern would be evidence of the perpetuation of the "casta". He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, because this is where PSOE has ended up: a party no longer in control of its destiny and suffering the collateral damage of ebbing electoral support.

Sánchez threw down the gauntlet last week. There would be "primaries", ostensibly to determine who will lead the party into a third election but manifestly a vote of confidence (or not). Moreover, were Sánchez to carry the day, the quirks of the system might enable him to magic up a pact that would not require an election. The cut-off point, when the King dissolves parliament, is the end of this month. Prime Minister Sánchez might step forward, Pablo Iglesias with his hands on the strings and God alone knows whatever other parties coming along for the ride.

The gauntlet thrown, and executive committee members resigned en masse, their support for him gone. Díaz declared her coup. "Barons" in the party lined up against Sánchez, and the party's past - that hostage - caught up with Sánchez. Felipe González, still exercising great influence, declared that he had been "fooled" by Sánchez. The knife was being twisted and it was being turned in the direction of the "casta".

In the end, it wasn't a vote to abstain to allow Rajoy's investiture that did it. There was to be a show of hands on the holding of a congress, in effect a vote of confidence in Sánchez. He lost. He walked. Whichever way it had gone, Podemos would have succeeded. The party founded by one Pablo Iglesias had been infiltrated by another Pablo Iglesias. Its future has been determined not by it but by an outside force: it was Iglesias who launched the coup. Whether it has a future will be seen. The past week was monumental in deciding its fate.

Lessons From Andalusia

On 22 March, Andalusia held its regional election. It had been caller because of a breakdown in the coalition government led by Susana Díaz of PSOE. The election returned PSOE as the most voted for party, with the same number of seats that it had obtained at the previous election, and while most post-electon analysis concentrated on the relative polling of different parties and what this might mean for elections elsewhere, such as here in the Balearics in under two weeks time, there was another aspect which may well have greater relevance to the Balearics. Although PSOE "won" the election, it failed to gain a majority, just as it had at the previous election. But unlike at that election, in March there was no obvious coalition candidate to come to PSOE's aid, and there still isn't. Consequently, Díaz said that she would govern with a minority. However, it isn't quite as simple as this (if forming a minority government can be described as simple). There is the matter of what other deputies in parliament think, and on Friday, they offered their thoughts. En bloc they voted against her investiture as president: in effect, Andalusia is currently without a government.

The parliament will hold another vote on Thursday. There may well be further votes but if, by the middle of July, Diáz has still not received support (or abstentions) that will enable her investiture, a new election will have to be called: those are the rules. Both Podemos and Ciudadanos have indicated a willingness to consider a pact - and the number of seats each has would be sufficient to create a majority - but there are strings attached. A fundamental principle of these two parties is their anti-corruption stance, and both have made it clear that a condition would be the removal of a former president, Manuel Chaves, from the national Congress of Deputies: he, as with Díaz's predecessor, is implicated in the enormous ERE (redundancy) scandal in Andalusia.

As things stand, Chaves will be on his way out after the Spanish general election in any event. Getting him to stand down now would, though, be symbolic: an act of commitment by PSOE to make a stand against corruption, alleged or otherwise. As this hasn't happened, neither Podemos nor Ciudadanos (C's) can accept entering into a coalition with Díaz.

The Chaves affair is just one way in which what is happening in Andalusia is similar to the Balearics. Here, the likelihood is that President Bauzá's Partido Popular will fall quite some way short of a majority on 24 May. With the support of the C's, it might just be possible that it could get a coalition majority, but the C's leader in the Balearics, Xavier Pericay, has ruled out a pact with any party unless the C's wins the most votes at the election (which it won't). Nevertheless, Pericay has said that the C's might be willing to give parliamentary support without entering a formal coalition, but there is one very big string attached. Pericay is making a similar demand to the one in Andalusia regarding Chaves. He wants Bauzá to get rid of José María Rodríguez as president of the PP in Palma because of his association with corruption.

Whether this happens or not, the outcome of the Balearic election is likely to give the same sort of situation as there is in Andalusia, except that the PP is the ruling party and not PSOE. Bauzá would gain the most votes and seats, but he would have no coalition partner, while PSOE may not be able to form a coalition majority as an alternative. It has been mooted that Bauzá might look to form a minority government, but what would happen if he tried to? Díaz is finding it difficult, and so would Bauzá. Opposition parties in the Balearics will be looking at what is happening in Andalusia with keen interest and they might well, in the event that Bauzá tries to govern in minority, simply block his investiture. So, a further election this year might have to be held, but there is another factor which has entered the equation: it is now being openly talked about the PP getting rid of Bauzá.

The word is that senior figures in the PP would, if the party fails to gain at least 25 seats (and the polls suggest that it would not), call an extraordinary congress and elect a new leader. This still might not allow a presidential investiture to go ahead if a minority government was contemplated, but it would be more likely. Alternatives, including the current mayor of Palma, Mateo Isern, are being spoken about, and he would surely have no problem with ousting Rodríguez.

Polls aren't of course always right, but if they are, then there will be great uncertainty after 24 May, and Andalusia might just give a clue as to how uncertain things will be.

Misrepresentation Of The People

The Partido Popular has lost a vote in the Balearic parliament. It is the first vote that it has lost during this administration. It will be the last. It was a vote lost because despite the PP having a clear majority, the majority is too low. A qualified majority of two-thirds of the parliamentary deputies was required for them to act like turkeys, vote for Christmas and to see sixteen of their number removed from the chamber. The PP motion to cut parliamentary representation was always destined to fail. The party has no friends in parliament. The motion, the debate, the vote were no more than symbolic.

Nevertheless, the process was worthwhile. Before President Bauzá got it underway, had anyone stopped to ask why the Balearics needed 59 deputies? His opponents refused to back the motion because they feared that a reduction would merely strengthen the PP and would "alter the basic rules of Balearic democracy". Bauzá argued that it was only a cost-cutting exercise: an annual saving of seven million euros. Neither view focused on the core issue. Why 59? And neither view addressed an underlying issue. Just who do these 59 represent?

The opposition speak of basic rules of democracy, but what do they mean? The representation of the people in the Balearics is significantly greater than the Spanish benchmark of one parliamentary deputy per 40,000 people. Basic rules of democracy were not about to have been broken had the Balearics ratio changed from one deputy per 19,000 people to 1:26,000, which is what would have happened if the motion had been accepted. But whether 43 or 59 deputies, there is the subsidiary question - who do they actually represent?

At present in parliament there is only deputy who can be considered to in any way represent a constituency, and that is Margalida Font, the single deputy for the island of Formentera. None of the others can be, because no deputy, including Sra. Font, has a constituency. Comparing the parliamentary system here to the one in Britain may not be fair, and it would be wrong to assert that the British system is by any means perfect or truly representative, but the constituency basis of that system does give greater accountability: an MP is, not always in practice of course, accountable to his or her constituents. In the Balearics there aren't constituents to be accountable to. The consequence of this is that a deputy's allegiance is to the party and to the party alone. There are no constituents to muddy the waters and potentially divide that allegiance.

Coming back to the number of deputies, it is hard to accept the opposition's argument that democracy would somehow be diminished if there were fewer of them. By standards of other parts of Spain, the Balearic parliament is over-represented and would still have been with 16 fewer deputies. But over-representation, even at an unnecessary cost of seven million euros a year, is preferable to under-representation, which brings us to Andalusia.

There, the ratio of deputies to population is one per 77,000, almost double the national benchmark, and it has of course just had a parliamentary election. For a population approximately eight times greater than that of the Balearics, Andalusia doesn't even manage to have twice as many deputies: 109 play the Balearics 59. The representation, whether too little or too great, is cockeyed. And in Andalusia it will be even more so if Susana Díaz does as she has said she will, which is to govern in minority.

The PSOE minority in Andalusia isn't to the tune of one or two seats. It is eight short of the 55 needed for a majority, a far from insignificant shortfall in terms of what her PSOE colleagues in the Balearics might deem to be the "basic rules" of democracy. And the 47 seats have been gained with a percentage share of the vote of just over one-third. How can governing in minority when the minority is as small as it is be considered to be adequately representative? It can't be. Díaz's proposal, supported by PSOE's national leader, Pedro Sanchez, is little short of a disgrace.

Why does she appear intent on minority government and so on avoiding coalition partners? Let's hazard a guess. The partner would have to be one or other of Podemos or Ciudadanos, both of them rivals to PSOE nationally. The last thing PSOE wants at present is to give either of them the credibility that would come from inclusion in a coalition and so also potentially strengthen their support nationally. But between them, Podemos and Ciudadanos gained a quarter of the share of the vote. Denying either of them the chance to be in government would be a snub to the electorate and an abuse of the system of proportional representation.

Andalusia Is Spain: Regional election

Andalusia is the Spain we were sold. When the country ended its exile, the world was sold Andalusia: a vivid kaleidoscope of reds, blacks, oranges and yellows. Flamenco, bullfighting, citrus and heat: searing heat. Where Europe met Africa, Andalusia was a place apart, the exotica of its imagery etched firmly into a foreign consciousness. Spain was Andalusia.

Andalusia is still a place apart. While the whole of Spain suffered because of economic crisis, Andalusia suffered more than most. But it has always suffered. For all its imagery, complemented by the Costa del Sol, the golf courses, the marinas, the grand cities, it has always been a poor region. GDP per capita is the second lowest in Spain; only its neighbour Extremadura is poorer. Not that help has not been forthcoming. Over the years, roughly 50,000 million euros of European funds have been spent on it, but it has never remotely looked like becoming "one of Europe's most prosperous regions", as its former president, Manuel Chaves, said that by 2020 it would be. Youth unemployment, at desperate levels because of crisis, were at their worst in Andalusia and still are. The young of Andalusia, seduced by the good money of construction for tourism and foreign property buyers, preferred the building site to education, but when the building stopped they had nowhere to go except back to their families when the houses they had bought with the wages of concrete and with all-too-easy mortgages were repossessed.

It is a place apart in a political sense. Since it obtained autonomous community status in 1981 and started to elect its own regional government the following year, Andalusia has never known anything other than socialism; the PSOE brand of socialism. On Sunday, the people of Andalusia voted, the opinion polls confident that the PSOE dynasty was not about to be ended.

Susana Díaz became president in September 2013 when José Griñán stepped down. In January she ended the coalition with the IU (United Left) that PSOE had been forced into after the last election. The relationship between the two parties had deteriorated, as had that between Díaz and the leader of the IU, Antonio Maíllo. An election had to be called. Two months before other regional elections, the interest in it has been greater than it would otherwise have been. Here was the first real measure of how Podemos would do. Here also was a test of the centre-left Ciudadanos, which has appeared from almost nowhere to feature significantly in national opinion polls. But here also were potential indications of what other elections - regional and national - might hold for PSOE and the Partido Popular. For PSOE, defeat in Andalusia would be unthinkable, but a lowering of its percentage of the vote in 2012 (39.6%) would border on the disastrous; a confirmation of the inroads made by Podemos. The PP would know that the 40.7% of the 2012 vote was going to slump. But by how much? Though a PSOE stronghold, its share of the vote had generally been an upward one since 1990 when it could only just muster 22%.

As things turned out, disaster did strike. Susana Díaz said the victory was "historic", and it was; historic in the low percentage of the vote. PSOE won the same number of seats (47) as in 2012, but its share of the vote was down by over 4%. For the PP, a loss of 14% and 17 seats was bad but not as bad as opinion polls had suggested. Podemos, as had been expected, came in third, its performance in line with those opinion polls (15 seats and almost 15% of the share of the vote). The Ciudadanos surge was not as great as had been predicted (9 seats and just over 9% of the vote).

So, how does one interpret all this as an indication of what might happen in the other elections to come? Because of the strength of PSOE in Andalusia, it was always going to win, and this despite the corruption cases that have afflicted it in the region. Its 35.4% share of the vote is vastly greater than how it is performing in national opinion polls, the latest three of which have given it an average 19.3% share, but it probably says very little about other elections, other than to confirm that PSOE has failed to reassert itself against the PP. It is a hollow victory, and the PSOE hierarchy will know that it is.

The PP's share of the vote, poor though it was, was higher than how it currently rates in national opinion polls. There may be some consolation in this but it is certainly not a performance that will fill it with confidence. For the PP, PSOE isn't really the threat; it is the other parties.

There is a misguided view that Podemos is only killing PSOE. This simply isn't so, as the loss of support that the PP is suffering is due in no small part to Podemos and others. For Podemos, the Andalusia vote went much as had been anticipated. The share of the vote is seven points lower than how it is rated in national opinion polls, but the strength of PSOE in Andalusia was always going to mean that it couldn't match these national levels.

It would be overstating things to say that Podemos was the real victor in Andalusia, but the vote proves that when the electorate turns up to vote it doesn't suddenly have a change of heart and opt instead for the status quo of one or other of the two main parties. Podemos, and to a lesser extent Ciudadanos, have genuinely arrived.  

Andalusia, as it always has been, is a place apart. The election confirms this only in terms of PSOE's victory. Otherwise, the election shows that it is Spain, and for Spain, Andalusia now poses a big question - with which party does PSOE form a coalition? If it is Podemos, then the shape of Spain's politics for the next four to five years may well have been formed in Andalusia.

In With The New: PSOE

So, farewell, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. You always seemed like a pleasant enough chap. A benign uncle with a hint of the oppressed hidden in your Gulag facial growth. But none of this helped in your turning around your party. As you said of the Euro elections, "the results are bad".

He should have gone after losing the election in 2011. But Spain's political parties can tolerate losers. Perhaps he had hoped that he might emulate Rajoy. A two-time loser but third time lucky, maybe only tolerated because he knew where the bodies were buried. One day they might be exhumed.

PSOE were given such an almighty great kicking in 2011 that a fresh start was demanded. The party flunked it. Faith was retained in Zapatero's faithful old retainer at a time when the party's face needed a clean shave and some reinvigorating moisturiser to rid it of its beardy socialism image. It could have done with a female face. It might now get one.

It's not as if the left in Spain is going mainly down the drain. The Euros proved as much. But PSOE's leftness had been centred and obscured by a Blairite chameleon form that it had adopted. No one quite knows what it stands for or where it is going. At least with Rajoy you know what the PP stands for, even if you might prefer it to sit down or curl up in a corner and put itself to sleep.

The strong performance of the left does, however, have to be placed in some context. Spaniards are good voters when it comes to their own elections. They turn up. Electoral abstemiousness of a Euro kind will be replaced by polling bingeing. The left will probably still perform well but the astonishing success of Podemos is most unlikely to carry through to the national or indeed regional elections. The right-wing press is already sharpening its knives and hunting for the hatchets. Sr. Iglesias will find his ponytail chopped off in his prime moment of seeking to influence prime ministerial selection.

The left vote is fragmented. PSOE have to know where they are amidst the pieces of this fractured jigsaw. Left, centre, right. Where exactly? They need new ideas but above all they need a new image. Austerity may have been the order of the day and the order of Brussels - one with which PSOE would have had to conform - but if there was to have been austerity, far better if it had been delivered to a suffering Spaniard as the fait accompli it was always going to have been by a face less austere than Rubalcaba's or indeed Rajoy's. Brighten up, PSOE; brighten up, Spain.

PSOE's performance at the Euro elections was nothing short of disastrous. The 23% of the vote it achieved was the lowest it had ever attained. The leader of its Euro campaign, Elena Valenciano, recognised that it was very bad. There are only degrees of badness with which PSOE can take any solace. Rubalcaba thought the results were merely bad. The very bad of Sra. Valenciano surely rules her out of the running as a successor to Rubalcaba. No more losers, PSOE. And consequently, perhaps, no Carme Chacón, who lost out to Rubalcaba in the race to succeed Zapatero. At least she has said that there is a need for PSOE to change. Indeed, but change into what?

It may change into an Andalusian model of PSOE socialism, that of the Andalusian president Susana Díaz. Some reports suggest that she is already nailed on, though she has suggested that she will continue in Andalusia. There again, declarations of brazen ambition at times of party mourning might not go down well in PR terms.

If not Sra. Díaz, then possibly Eduardo Madina, PSOE's secretary-general in Congress. I have previously played up his prospects, though a correspondent of mine has taken issue with me. He would be a Zapatero Mark II. Would the party want another Bambi or Bean? Possibly not.

There has been an inevitability that PSOE would find itself needing to find someone to lead it into the next elections in 2015. I had forecast that Rubalcaba would have been gone, and now he has, albeit he will limp on, dead man walking, in aiming weak blows to the PP body in Congress until a PSOE phoenix rises from the ashes of another electoral conflagration.

The inevitability was partly because of the failure to grasp the nettle at the end of 2011. It has also been because the electorate is fed up with a two-party system that stubbornly refuses to make itself transparent and accountable. The PP has to look at itself, too. The Euro elections were nothing to do with Europe. They were to do with Spain. Podemos may get scattered to the winds by the time of the national election, but there are other parties. New image time, PSOE.