Since December’s elections, Pedro Sánchez’s party has fallen a long way short of securing an overall majority

An attempt by Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist party leader, to become the country’s prime minister has stalled after he failed to secure enough votes in parliament to form a government.

After the rightwing Popular party and the anti-austerity Podemos said they would not support him, Sánchez secured 130 votes, a long way short of the 176 needed for an overall majority.

Sánchez has no option now but to return to the house on Friday and ask to form a minority government. He will only succeed in this if either PP or Podemos votes for him or abstains, neither of which is a likely scenario.

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After setting out his stall on Tuesday, on Wednesday it was the turn of the other party leaders to respond to his proposals. The PP leader, Mariano Rajoy, dismissed Sánchez’s attempt to form a government in a coalition with the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) party as a “fictitious and unreal candidacy”. He accused Sánchez of “lying to the Spanish people and to the king”.



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Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, said he would not betray his supporters by backing Sánchez’s left-right coalition. “Don’t bow to the oligarchs, Señor Sánchez,” Iglesias said. “Negotiate with us and stop listening to the siren voices that will sink you.”

Albert Rivera, the Ciudadanos leader, quoted Winston Churchill, saying that “the problem with our epoch is that there are men who would rather be important than useful”.



Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, writing in the Guardian on Tuesday, said his party would support a Socialist-Podemos coalition if its manifesto included a referendum on Catalan independence. This would give a leftist coalition the votes it lacks for a majority. However, Sánchez ruled out a referendum and warned the Catalans against making a unilateral declaration of independence.

The nation now faces two months of haggling and horse-trading. If by 2 May a government has not been formed, fresh elections will be called for 26 June.

By then the Socialists and the PP will almost certainly have ditched their leaders but there is no indication that the June election will be any more conclusive than the one held in December. The real question is whom a disgruntled electorate will choose to punish for what they see as a fiasco.

• The subheading of this article was amended on 3 March 2016. An earlier version referred to the Spanish elections from “last month”, when they were in December 2015.

