PSOE decision to abstain in confidence vote over conservative government is likely to end 10 months of political deadlock

Spain’s embattled Socialists have voted to lift a longstanding veto that has prevented conservatives from forming a minority government, in what could end a 10-month political impasse.

The conservative Popular party (PP) of the acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, won elections in December 2015 and again in June this year but without enough seats to rule alone.

The PP therefore needs the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) to either support its government or abstain in a parliamentary confidence vote, which could be held as soon as next week.

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After a bitter dispute, delegates of the PSOE voted to abstain by a margin of 139 to 96 at a special congress in Madrid on Sunday.

Fault lines within the PSOE have emerged between the executive and the grassroots. For the latter, even passive support for the PP is anathema and it is predicted that many will leave the party and drift towards the anti-austerity party Podemos.

Following the result, Pablo Iglesias, the Podemos leader, tweeted: “The end of the ‘turnism’ of the two-party system. The Grand Coalition is born.”

The United Left party tweeted: “Game over, the oligarchy has won.”

Javier Fernández, who is in charge of PSOE until it elects a new leader, argued that abstention was the “lesser evil”, given that the other option was to force an election in December – which would have been Spain’s third in a year.

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However, many in the party disagree. Last month the party leader Pedro Sánchez was ousted by 132 votes to 107 for opposing abstention. Sánchez wanted to form a left coalition with Podemos as well as Basque and Catalan nationalists to keep Rajoy out.

Sanchez, among others, argued that it was wrong to support a party as tainted with corruption as the PP. Over the past four years as many as 500 PP elected representatives – from village mayors to cabinet ministers – have been or are being investigated for corruption.

However, the party executive, joined by the powerful Andalusia region, said the party must put Spain first, saying the electorate would punish PSOE if it were seen to be blocking the formation of a government.

Speaking against the resolution, Miquel Iceta, leader of the Socialists’ party of Catalonia, said: “We don’t believe in Rajoy’s willingness or ability to fight corruption. And we believe our political position would be seriously damaged by abstaining, especially without first making a serious effort to form an alternative government.”

Idoia Mendia, the Basque socialist leader, said abstention would leave the party “ill-defined, leaderless and forever guilty” of facilitating a PP government. Furthermore, PSOE has not extracted any significant policy commitments from PP in exchange for letting them govern.

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Susan Díaz, the pro-abstention leader of the Andalusian federation and the person most likely to replace Sánchez as PSOE leader, was the last to speak in the debate. “We can’t keep telling people in election after election that their vote doesn’t count,” she said, appealing for party unity. “The options are bad but the citizens have made us the opposition.”

In the election last December the PP gained the most seats but fell far short of an overall majority. Unable to form a government, the country went to the polls again in June but the result was broadly similar, although the PP slightly increased its lead.

As the PP already has the support of the centre-right Citizens party, only 11 PSOE MPs need to abstain to give Rajoy the majority he needs. But the party wants to force all of its representatives to abstain, something the Catalans and others have said they feel unable to do.

In Catalonia this may lead to a split and may see the party absorbed into Podemos or the new left grouping emerging around the Barcelona mayor, Ada Colau.

Podemos has now withdrawn its support from regional coalitions with the PSOE in order to better position itself as the main party of the left, a task made easier by the socialist abstention. However, Podemos is not immune to internal squabbles and is currently immersed in a leadership struggle of its own.