Introduction to Spanish politics in 2023 for lemmytors:
Simplifying everything, the Spanish speaking right-wing is led by the mainstream right party Partido Popular or PP, which needs the support of the far right party Vox. However, Vox is radically centralist and wants to take away functions from Comunidades Autónomas or regional governments (similar to the US' individual states), which makes it impossible for a PP-Vox coalition to reach any agreement with the Catalan or Basque parties, for which autonomy of the regional governments is a core issue.
This means that the only viable government is one formed by PSOE (socialdemocrats/liberals) and Sumar (democratic socialists/anticapitalists), supported by ERC (Catalan left wing), Junts (Catalan right wing), Bildu (Basque left wing) and PNV (Basque right wing), which is a very similar composition to the government we had before these elections. This means a parliament that isn't too shaky, but also not too stable, because these parties have a lot of divergent goals and are mostly united by not wanting PP-Vox to reach the central government.
What has the government done during the previous 4 years?
These years have been fundamentally marked by the pandemic first, and by the war in Ukraine later. The pandemic was met with a moderately strong lockdown, which likely contained a potentially far more difficult disaster but badly damaged the tourism-based Spanish economy, while the right-wing opposition was promoting denialism and COVID conspiracy theories. In order to protect companies and employment, the government issued processes of temporary suspension of employment, where companies were forbidden to fire workers during the lockdown but their salaries were subsidized.
The sanctions on Russia shouldn't have affected Spain too much, since we mostly get our gas from Algeria, and this is backed by the fact that Spain got one of the lowest inflation rates of the EU in 2022. However, this didn't stop energy distribution companies from getting embroiled in a speculation process that has fundamentally affected basic goods, so even though in macroeconomic terms we have had a low inflation in comparison with other European countries, that inflation has been unevenly distributed and damaged humble families the most. A criticism that should be made here is that the government didn't do enough to regulate and/or punish distribution companies that engaged in speculation that wasn't driven by real cost increases.
These two matters aside, the government did also:
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Enact a relatively ineffective minimum income, which according to official statistics has supported almost 2 million people, but looking deeper into the data you find plenty of bureaucratic traps that provoked these grants to become far too difficult to get and somewhat easy to lose.
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Several feminist reforms, such as allowing 16 year olds to get abortions without parental permission, allowing doctors to grant paid medical leave due to particularly painful periods, and a reform on the law regulating sex abuse crimes. This measure has been particularly controversial as it provoked roughly 100 sex offenders to be released early, which according to the responsible minister was provoked by judges wilfully misinterpreting the law.
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The "Trans Law", which grants the right of gender self-determination, allowing people to change their legal gender without permission from a doctor or a judge, making Spain one of the first countries of the world to recognize this right. While this provoked a lot of controversy in mass media and social media, voters mostly supported the reform, with over 50% supporting it and barely 20% opposing it.
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A not too successful reform on rent, allowing cities to enact zones where landlords are forbidden to raise rent if they notice sharp increases. However, this hasn't prevented rent prices to continue raising. Near the end of the period, the government has started drafting plans for increasing public housing, but it's undeniable too little and too late.
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Continued increases of minimum salary, aiming to get closer to France's, gradually increasing from 900€/month in 2019 to 1080€/month in 2023. During the same period, unemployement has decreased despite the pandemic. Inflation was within control until the start of the war.
It should also be mentioned:
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Stagnation of Catalonya's indepedence process. While PSOE promised to negotiate with Catalan parties, the idea of a referendum has further slipped away across the years. While it remains unclear how aggressive Catalan parties will be during the incoming rounds of negotiations, their loss of support during these elections leaves them at a weakened position. It could be argued, after yesterday's results, that many Catalans have decided independence isn't too important for them as long as the Spanish-speaking right wing isn't ruling from Madrid.
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Looking forward, there will likely continue to be tensions between PSOE's extremely moderate economic views, and Sumar's ambitions for wide reforms. One of the core measures Sumar has campaigned for was a reduction on the workweek. The ever rising price of rents will likely make housing a hot issue, but PSOE will find itself in tension as many members in the higher echelons of their party tend to appeal to landlords' interests.
What has the right wing campaigned for?
PP, the mainstream right wing party, has ran a rather dull campaign based on common talking points for any opposition party, such as the ideas that the ruling party has mismanaged the economy, but haven't been too explicit regarding their actual plans.
Vox, on the other hand, has a very strange tendency to straight up copy the talking points of the US' republican party, regardless of how well accepted they are in Spanish society. Two particularly notorious examples would be their denialism of climate change and their attempt to capitalize on transphobia, despite Spain being one of the European countries most acceptive of trans people:
After the recent local elections a few months ago, many town councils now ruled by a PP-Vox coalition have engaged in a variety of measures such as the early removal of LGBT flags, and the censorship of media pieces that display LGBT realities in local services.