PSOE aims to govern alone with support of Podemos after rival People’s party loses seats in face of far-right surge

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Spain’s socialist party has begun weighing up its options for government after storming past its traditional conservative rival in Sunday’s snap general election but failing to win a majority.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, led his socialist PSOE party to its first victory since 2008, winning 123 seats and taking 29% of the vote.

Spanish general election 2019: full results Read more

The rightwing People’s party (PP) endured a catastrophic night as its seat count plummeted from 137 to 66, while the poll also marked a breakthrough for the far-right Vox party, which took 24 seats to enter the national parliament for the first time.

The PSOE also routed the PP in the upper house of the Spanish parliament, where it took control by winning 121 senators – up from 43 three years ago. The PP’s headcount was slashed from 130 to 56.

With Spain’s third election in four years producing another hung parliament, speculation is mounting as to how the PSOE will secure the 176 seats needed to form a government in the 350-seat congress of deputies.

At the moment, the socialists are aiming to govern alone, albeit with the continuing support of the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos and its allies, led by Pablo Iglesias.

“We think we’ve got more than enough support to keep steering this ship,” the deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, told Cadena Ser radio on Monday morning.

“We’re very aware that Unidas Podemos has helped us a lot and backs our progressive aims. But we think this is the course we need to follow.”

Even with the support of Podemos and its allies, Sánchez would have only 165 seats and would need to rely on smaller regional and nationalist parties.

He will be keen to avoid turning again to the two Catalan separatist parties who backed him in the successful no-confidence motion that removed the PP from office in June last year and allowed the PSOE to take power.

The two parties – the Catalan Republican Left and Together for Catalonia – triggered the snap election by siding with the Spanish right to reject his 2019 budget.

Such a move would also allow Sánchez’s opponents to deploy their familiar argument that the prime minister is too beholden to Catalan separatists and ought to take a less conciliatory approach to the independence issue.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pedro Sánchez celebrates the election result at the Socialist party headquarter in Madrid. Photograph: JuanJo Martin/EPA

José Luis Ábalos, Spain’s public works minister, said there would be no deal with the Catalan Republican Left, which won 15 seats in the election.

“We said we wouldn’t go there and we’re not going to,” he told Telecinco. Abalos also said the PSOE “isn’t in a rush to make a government deal at the moment”, adding that it was instead focusing on programmes and proposals.

How the far right gained a foothold in Spain Read more

Another plan would be to hope that the Catalan separatists will agree to abstain in the second round of an investiture vote in parliament, allowing Sánchez back into office with a simple majority.

Buoyed by the party’s success, grassroots PSOE supporters are unlikely to back any deal with the centre-right Citizens party, led by Albert Rivera, even though it would yield 180 seats.

As Sánchez appeared at the party’s Madrid base following his victory, supporters chanted: “Not with Rivera”.

The Citizens leader firmly ruled out backing the PSOE during the campaign, and may well prefer to remain in opposition in the hope of taking advantage of the PP’s woeful results to position his party as the dominant voice of the Spanish right.

Rivera seemed to be pursuing that strategy on Monday morning, when he tweeted: “Thank you to the 4,136,600 Spaniard who have turned Citizens into a winning force of the future. With all the strength you’ve given is, we’ll lead the opposition to control the Sánchez-Iglesias government.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters of the centre-right Citizens party celebrates its better than expected results. Photograph: Chema Moya/EPA

Sunday’s result reflects the growing fragmentation of the Spanish right, which, until recently, had been represented by the PP.

But the arrival of Vox has pushed both the PP and Citizens further to the right as they struggle to stop voters defecting to the upstart party, whose popularity has surged on the back of the Catalan independence crisis.

The PP’s leader, Pablo Casado, described the party’s worst electoral showing as “very bad” but has previously said he would not resign if the party fared poorly.

PP chiefs will also be reluctant to add to the party’s woes by ditching him as leader with less than a month to go until European, regional and municipal elections.

Casado was keeping a low profile on Monday, but the PP’s secretary general, Teodoro García Egea spoke to reporters in the early afternoon.

“It’s obvious that the result is very bad and, starting right now, we’re going to work to regain the confidence of those Spaniards who stayed at home or opted for a different political option,” he said.

But, in an apparent reference to Rivera, García Egea insisted that Casado remained “the only alternative to a Sánchez government”.

He added: “Yesterday, today and for the next four years, the leader of the opposition is called Pablo Casado”.