Key issues looming over Spain’s election

Spain will hold its fourth election in as many years on Sunday, following weeks of political turbulence and violent clashes between Catalan separatists and police, and the long-awaited exhumation of Franco’s remains.

Polls suggest Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists will once again win the most seats in parliament but fall short of a majority, meaning they will have to form alliances with other parties in order to govern.

Here are the key issues likely to affect the election:

– Unrest in Catalonia –

After years of peaceful mass demonstrations, Catalonia’s separatist movement took a violent turn on October 14 when Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine of its leaders to heavy prison terms of up to 13 years over the failed independence bid of 2017.

The ruling triggered days of mass protests in Barcelona and other Catalan cities, which by night descended into chaos, with demonstrators torching barricades and hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at police.

Elisenda Paluzie, who heads the influential grassroots separatist organisation ANC, said the images of Barcelona in flames, which flashed around the globe, “made visible the conflict” between Catalan separatists and Madrid.

The issue became the central theme of the campaign with the right pressuring Sanchez to suspend Catalonia’s regional autonomy or remove Catalonia’s regional president from office.

While Sanchez has resisted taking these measures, he has hardened his tone towards the separatists.

– Far-right Vox gains –

Polls show the Catalan crisis has given a big boost to Vox, which made its parliamentary debut after winning 24 seats in the April election, becoming the first sizeable far-right party to enter the 350-seat assembly since Spain’s return to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

The party wants all separatist parties and associations banned and for Catalonia’s regional autonomy to be suspended until the separatist movement is “unequivocally defeated”.

Vox’s explosion on to the political scene has altered Spain’s political map, with its support allowing the conservative Popular Party (PP) and business-friendly Ciudadanos to form coalitions to govern regionally in Andalusia, Madrid and Murcia, and control City Hall in the Spanish capital.

– Franco exhumation –

Since coming to power in June 2018, Sanchez has prioritised efforts to move Franco’s remains from an opulent mausoleum where he was buried in 1975 to a more discreet family grave.

Accused by his rivals of electioneering, the Socialists argue the operation, which took place on October 24 following a lengthy legal battle with Franco’s family, strengthened Spain’s democratic credentials.

Many analysts believe the Socialists are seeking to mobilise leftist voters with the exhumation, but Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist at the Autonomous University of Madrid, said the move would “not have the effect that the government, optimistically, thought it would”.

– Growing fragmentation and instability –

Spain has been gripped by political instability since the December 2015 election, which saw the emergence of Ciudadanos and the far-left Podemos, ending three decades of bipartisan hegemony by the Socialists and the PP.

The fragmentation has continued with now three parties on the right: the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox, and three parties on the left: the Socialists, Podemos and upstart Mas Pais, which was launched in September by former top Podemos member Inigo Errejon.

Polls suggest neither the left nor the right bloc will win enough seats for a majority.

If Sanchez’s Socialists win the most seats again but fall short of a majority, as expected, one solution could involve the PP abstaining in a parliamentary confidence vote to allow him to form a new government.

The Socialists “have to reach some sort of an agreement with the PP”, Vallespin said.