Interview by Eoghan Gilmartin

“We don’t have to cower before this aggressive, ignorant right wing,” Pablo Iglesias reminded Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez during last Monday’s TV debate. The country’s acting prime minister, Sánchez spent most of the night trying to compete with the right-wing parties. In particular, this meant taking a hard line on the Catalan crisis — promising to ensure exiled ex-Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont would be extradited from Belgium to face justice in the Spanish courts.

Tensions in Catalonia ignited again last month after Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced twelve pro-independence leaders to lengthy jail terms for helping organize the outlawed referendum on seceding from Spain in 2017. This included thirteen years for former deputy premier Oriol Junqueras, who was found guilty of sedition. In response, massive protests broke out across the region, which turned to rioting after police forcefully broke up the occupation of Barcelona’s airport. Between October 14–18 the city witnessed some of the heaviest rioting in Spain for decades — with more sporadic clashes that followed.

The unrest has dominated the run-up to Spain’s general election on November 10. This vote is itself an expression of political crisis — it is the second such contest in six months, and fourth in four years. After the last contest in April, Sánchez suggested but then walked away from a potential left-wing coalition with Pablo Iglesias’s Unidas Podemos, triggering repeat elections in which his own PSOE could bid for a stronger mandate. Sánchez has used the standoff in Catalonia to pivot rightward — positioning PSOE as the only party that can deliver order and constitutional stability.

Yet this operation could well prove counterproductive. Polls suggest the PSOE will not in fact improve on its 28.7 percent result in April’s contest, with the party projected to lose between five and ten seats. Such a result should be enough to maintain the PSOE position as the country’s largest party, but the most likely outcome is some form of grand coalition between Sánchez’s party and its historic adversary, the right-wing Partido Popular.