Spain: Populists Make Massive Gains, Salvini Predicts ‘Racist’ Smears by Media

[Swordsmyth]

The national populist Vox party has made massive gains in the Spanish elections — prompting Italy’s Matteo Salvini to predict they will be smeared as “racists” and “fascists”.

Spanish voters were heading to the polls for the fourth time since 2015 — and the second time this year — after Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez found he was unable to govern, but the election results did not increase his mandate.
In fact, Sanchez has actually lost some ground, and the left-wing Unidas Podemos (United We Can) party which is the Socialists’ most natural ally in the Cortes Generales, as the Spanish parliament is known, has lost even more.


So-called independentist parties in Catalonia, which have a leftist bent despite their ambitions for sovereign statehood — scorned by the European Union, regardless of the Catalans’ europhilia — have also performed poorly, and may not be well-disposed towards Sanchez in any case, given he had harsh words for them during the election campaign.

Spain, result as of 99.8% counted:
Seats: 350
PSOE-S&D: 120
PP-EPP: 87
VOX-ECR: 52
UP-LEFT: 35
ERC-Greens/EFA: 13
Cs-RE: 10
JxCAT-NI: 8
PNV-RE: 7
Bildu-LEFT: 5
MP-LEFT|G/EFA: 3
CUP-LEFT: 2
Learn about the parties and subscribe: https://t.co/QcUlcJwlfx #eleccionesgenerales10N pic.twitter.com/usaxmlu9gI
— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) November 10, 2019

The “centre-right” People’s Party which led the country before Sanchez and the Socialists made some modest gains after a historically poor result earlier in 2019, while the europhile Ciudadanos (Citizens) party — which the mainstream media often describes as centre-right, even though it describes itself as “post-nationalist” — has collapsed to less than 7 per cent of the vote.

The breakout stars of the election, meanwhile, are the national populist Vox party led by Santiago Abascal, which campaigned on a platform emphasising border securit, including building a wall to stop violent incursions into Spain’s African cities of Ceuta and Melilla by illegal aliens hoping to reach EU soil, and national unity, including proposals to outlaw parties seeking secession from the Spanish state.
This was a strong contrast with the Socialists, who allowed Spain to become Europe’s number one entry point for illegal migrants, declared that the continent needed “new blood”, and vowed to dismantle their African exclaves’ existing border security.
Having increased its vote share by around 50 per cent, Vox will now will leapfrog both Podemos and Ciudadanos to become the third-largest party in the Spanish parliament, after having only just entered it for the first time in April.

More at: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/201...-smears-media/

[Pauls' Revere]

I hope they go they way of Brexit.

Spexit?

[Swordsmyth]

A general election called to end political deadlock in Spain has only deepened uncertainty about the future of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy and raised the possibility of yet another ballot — the fifth in five years — next year.No party achieved a clear mandate to govern in Sunday’s vote, which was the second election in seven months and was intended to clear away the stalemate. Further weeks or months of political jockeying now lie ahead.


Contemplating the election outcome and another fragmented parliament, many people on the streets of Madrid were scratching their heads Monday over what would happen next.
“I think we are worse than before: We are more divided,” said Antonio Prados, a 44-year-old police officer. “I don’t know, there’s a possibility to form a government, but I don’t know how they will come up with the numbers.”
Andrew Dowling, an expert on contemporary Spanish politics at Cardiff University in Wales, said Sánchez’s plan to reconfigure parliament to his benefit had backfired, leaving Spain once again at the mercy of an unpredictable political landscape.
“The Spanish Socialist party made a major miscalculation in calling new elections,” Dowling said.
The next step will be for parliamentarians to select a house speaker in the coming weeks and then for talks between King Felipe VI and party leaders to begin so that one of them, most likely Sánchez, will be called on to try to form a government.
Sanchez was meeting with his party leadership later Monday. Party secretary José Ábalos said Sánchez will sound out other party leaders over the coming days and seek to form a government as soon as possible.
Ábalos said the Socialists would not build any coalitions with parties on the right, indicating it would seek support instead from other leftist groups and regional parties.
But Sánchez’s closest political allies, the left-wing United We Can party, fell from 42 to 35 seats.

More at: https://apnews.com/2ef48230926d485faeb551ef17e91127