Mariano Rajoy has been sworn in for a second term as Spain’s prime minister after winning a confidence vote in parliament to end the country’s 10-month spell without a government.



The leader of the conservative People’s party (PP) secured the necessary simple majority in Saturday’s vote but will face a battle to govern in a deeply divided congress of deputies and amid the proliferation of corruption scandals that have engulfed his party.

Thousands of people took to the streets around congress in the run-up to the vote to protest against Rajoy and the corruption allegations and spending cuts that marked his first term in office.

Protesters outside the Spanish parliament. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

“It’s going to be the same government, or similar, [as in] the past four years, which was disastrous for Spain,” Carmen López, a retired computer technician told Agence France-Presse.



Although the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE) decided to abstain in the vote to end the impasse and allow Rajoy’s return to power, it has vowed to fight his minority government every step of the way.

The socialists told Rajoy on Saturday that they had abstained for the good of the country and not to “back your odious reforms nor to pardon the grave corruption” within the PP.

“From today you are no longer acting [prime minister],” said the PSOE spokesman Antonio Hernando. “You now do not have the absolute majority that you’ve been feigning all year. You’re now in a clear minority and under the close watch of everyone in this congress.”

Despite the rhetoric, however, the socialists remain divided and in the hands of a caretaker leadership since Pedro Sánchez was ousted earlier this month over his refusal to allow the party to abstain.

And while he may lack a majority, Rajoy has the power to threaten fresh elections in which the PSOE would lose ground to the anti-austerity Unidos Podemos coalition, which has its sights set on leapfrogging the socialists to become the pre-eminent force of the Spanish left.

Although Rajoy has plenty on his plate – not least getting next year’s budget agreed, tackling the deficit and fixing the pension system – he has several tools at his disposal.

“I think what Rajoy is going to try to do is some pork-barrelling and horsetrading with the Basque and the Canary Islands parties to try to get over the line and pass the budget,” said Antonio Barroso, an analyst at the political risk advisory firm Teneo Intelligence.

“If that doesn’t work, it’s going to be complicated because the socialist party will be under pressure to abstain to facilitate the adoption of the budget. Rajoy has a very powerful tool in this regard, which is early elections.”

Similarly pressing is the Catalan question: the region’s pro-independence government is pushing ahead with plans to form a sovereign state next year despite fierce opposition from Madrid.

Antón Losada, a professor of political science at the University of Santiago de Compostela and the author of a book about Rajoy, predicted the current political climate would see the PP leader relying on the skills he acquired during his time in José María Aznar’s government in the late 1990s.

“He turned out to be one of Aznar’s most reasonable, most receptive ministers,” Losada said. “He was a bit of a firefighter for the Aznar government – a good negotiator and a guy who could do deals. We won’t see a new Rajoy, we’ll see the Rajoy we knew before he became the PP leader.”



Rajoy’s reputation for sitting back and letting others make the political weather belied the manoeuvrings of a skilled tactician, he said. Far from doing nothing after inconclusive elections in June and December, Rajoy had simply been following a plan.

“Rajoy came to two conclusions after December’s election: first that that they’d never let him govern on the results, so there was no point going for an investiture, and second that his opponents were so deeply locked in rivalry that they wouldn’t be able to reach an agreement to offer an alternative,” he said.

“It was simply a matter of time – and that explains his strategy. He did what he had to do: bide his time and withstand the pressure.”

Barroso agreed: “If Rajoy is remembered for something in terms of political strategy, it will be this wait-and-see strategy. He had the best cards and he’s stuck to them and it’s basically worked very well for him.”