Negotiations in the heat of the summer
New parliament speaker appointment breathes fresh life into the socialists and the king makes a traditional choice
Spain's national election left the entire country hanging in an end-of-season cliffhanger. Despite its inconclusive result, everyone was more than happy to switch off from politics during the summer break, including yours truly.
As you may remember, the two most likely scenarios are the re-edition of the current left-wing coalition government or an election rerun. Backstage negotiations between parties began as soon as leaders returned from their summer breaks. And in the last couple of weeks, two important events shed some light on how attempts to form a government are going: The appointment of Francina Armengol as the speaker of parliament and the king’s pick for a first attempt to form a government, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo.
A new season of Spain’s post-election drama has begun. Let’s tune in.
This edition also covers a brief by Democracy Reporting International and Maldita.es revealing the extent and reach of disinformation before and during the 23 July election.
The Polyglot Parliament
On 17 August, a majority of the newly-elected lawmakers came together to appoint Francina Armengol, a socialist, as the speaker of parliament.
This was possible because Sánchez and his socialists managed to secure the support of the Catalan pro-independence parties, who are driving a hard bargain to facilitate a second left-wing coalition government.
The fact that the hard-line secessionists of Junts per Catalunya and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, a pro-independence party with a track record of collaborating with Sánchez, voted for Armengol's appointment to the parliament presidency is a first victory for Sánchez.
The vote came through for the socialists after agreeing to a series of proposals from the regionalist parties. Among those are:
Allowing the use of Spain's regional languages in parliament: Catalan and all its variants, Basque and Galician: Giving speeches in those languages was not allowed in Spain's national parliament. Armengol has said that their use in parliamentary speeches would be authorised immediately. In practice, some worry about the costs and logistics this will entail. Or how it might affect MPs who are not fluent in regional languages. In more emotional terms, the decision has sparked all sorts of reactions. Javier Cercas, a renowned writer, thinks that banning Catalan from the Spanish parliament is an expression of a nationalism which holds that “a language is equal to a culture, a culture is equal to a nation and a nation is equal to a State”. In the opposite fashion, journalist Cristian Campos, claims that Catalan has always been useless and “expendable” to him, and the decision “reduces” the legal status of Spanish to that of the “redundant” regional languages.
Again, on languages, Spain has requested that Catalan, Basque and Galician become official languages of the EU: This is easier said than done. The final decision will require unanimity in the European Council, and there are practical challenges to making it happen, including steep costs.
Launching a parliamentary inquiry into the Pregasus scandal: This is a demand by pro-independence parties since many of their politicians and activists discovered that their mobile phones had been infected with the Israeli spying software. Spain reacted by sacking Paz Estebán, the head of the intelligence services. The use of Pegasus in Spain has another dimension: Sánchez and some of its ministers disclosed that they had also been victims of Pegasus. It is suspected -but not proven- that Morocco was behind the spying of Spain's members of government.
While Sánchez has another win in the bag, the road to a government is still long and laden with obstacles. Other than Sánchez himself, the person holding the nuclear button to push Spain to an election rerun is Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president residing in Waterloo to avoid prosecution for the failed Catalan independence bid of 2017. Puigdemont still holds a lot of sway in Junts per Catalunya, the party holding the key to a new government. He is actively involved in the negotiations and expected to make -or highly influence- a final decision.
Junts’ demands will go beyond language, and it is hard to say how far Sánchez will go to satisfy them. The first one is calling a referendum on Catalan independence, vut Sánchez has repeatedly said that this is off the table.
Sumar says they are open to discussing an amnesty bill related to the events in 2017 for Catalan activists and politicians. The socialists are, as of now, discrete regarding the talks with their potential allies. I'll offer more details on the talks in the coming editions as they become available.
The King’s Choice
Another pivotal piece has made its move in Spain's convoluted board- its king. Among the monarch's limited political powers is the duty to nominate the candidate who will attempt to form a government. This appointment is more ceremonial than political, as the king simply consults the parties to gauge which candidate is best positioned to form a majority. The candidate is usually the winner of the election.
But this time, the election winner is unable to form a majority. Hence, the king's choice has more political weight than in the past.
Felipe VI played the conservative card, both when it comes to tradition and the candidate, when he picked Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, the PP candidate and winner of the election. Even if his numbers don't add up, Feijóo says he sees it as his duty to try to form a government.
Feijóo has obtained the backing of some right-wing regionalist parties from Navarre and the Canary Islands. He would need the support -or abstention- of either the Basque Nationalist Party or one of the Catalan pro-independence parties. He is unlikely to get this.
Sánchez is next in line. As explained in the last section, he has secured the parliament's presidency for a party member and is already holding talks with regionalists and secessionist parties. If anything, Feijóo's doomed bid gives Sánchez more time to negotiate with its counterparts.
Postal Vote Conspiracies and Debunked Claims Made by Candidates
Could Spain ever witness something similar to the storming of the US Capitol or the protests at the Congress in Brazil? To many, this prospect will seem far-fetched.
But consider this: the events in Washington and Brasilia were not standalone incidents; instead, they marked the culmination of political turmoil long in the making and online disinformation campaigns aimed at sowing distrust in the electoral systems.
To an extent, this is what Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and Malidta.es observed while monitoring social media before and during the hard-fought campaign leading to the vote of 23 July.
Maldita.es, a Spanish fact-checking organisation, and DRI, a non-profit promoting democracy worldwide and the organisation I work for, revealed that up to 40% of flagged disinformation posts during election week centred around claims of electoral fraud. A significant portion of this disinformation focused on questioning the validity of mail-in ballots and the voting of expatriate Spaniards (such as my own). These conspiracy authorities achieved greater visibility than usual, helped by the fact that the election saw a record number of mail-in votes.
The debate on the validity of mail-in voting broke into mainstream media after Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, the conservative candidate, insinuated -without evidence- that some mail votes might not get delivered if too many postal service workers had gone on holiday. But as one would expect from a 300-year-old institution, the Spanish postal service knows how to plan for peak workload in the summer, and Feijóo's claims were dismissed by all actors (the postal service, the government and virtually everyone with common sense). This was one of Feijóo’s numerous gaffes during his erratic second week of campaigning.
The attempts to cast a shadow over the electoral system ran rife on 23 July, the day of the vote. Disinformation posts questioning the electoral system surged to 74% of all flagged content. Many of these posts revolved around an accident that disrupted train traffic between Madrid and Valencia, attributing the ocurrance to a deliberate attempt by the government to stop voters from reaching the ballots by setting a tunnel on fire.
We may have to accept that today's complex information space is fertile ground for bots, fringe activists and conspiracy theorists who choose to spend their free time muddying public discourse in an election. But it is harder to understand that politicians, including leading candidates, propagate falsehoods or misleading information merely to secure a handful of votes.
Debunked by Maldita, a selection of the claims made by leaders and party officials include:
The PSOE candidate and current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez shared a graph presenting a rosy yet misleading financial outlook for the public pension system. This publication reached 7.5 million impressions.
The opposition leader and PP candidate Alberto Núñez Feijoo repeatedly claimed that his party had consistently adjusted public pensions according to the official cost of living index, a claim proven false. He obfuscated his past statements in a tweet seen by 3.9 million, attempting to erase his earlier inconsistencies.
The leader of the far-right party VOX shared a publication with over 5.5 million views supporting the debunked claim that a North African immigrant was responsible for a murder in Madrid. The actual suspects were Spanish-born individuals, prompting an investigation by the Hate Crimes Prosecutor.
Yolanda Díaz, leader of Sumar, echoed a viral hoax through a tweet reaching 1.9 million impressions, falsely asserting that VOX proposed euthanising unadopted dogs. The origin of the content dates back to a 2019 unimplemented council proposal in Zaragoza and was not part of the party's program.
The analysis by Maldita.es and DRI also exposed an active online community disseminating narratives against migrants. A popular narrative claimed that France's riots foreshadowed Spain's future unless migration was curbed.
Despite the undoubtedly free and fair elections that yielded a complex yet undeniably legitimate outcome, coordinated attacks have laid the groundwork for future political actors who might challenge election results. I hope that we never get to see this in Spain.
You will find more in the full analysis on DRI’s website.
Is there anything that might prevent further spread of disinformation during elections? Some place hopes on the DSA, an EU regulation that has recently come into force. But it's a complex piece of legislation to implement and plenty of questions remain open in regard to its implementation. This is something my colleagues at Democracy Reporting International are monitoring, so if you'd like to know more, follow the organisation on social media or subscribe to our newsletter.
You may also access coverage of the report on Politico's Brussels Playbook by journalist Clothilde Goujard here. She also regularly reports on the DSA.
Odds and Ends
World Cup Triumph Overshadowed by Male Aggression: The victory of the Spanish Women’s National Football Team in the World Cup is now sadly a distant memory after a forced kiss keeps grabbing national and international headlines. During the post-game euphoria, Luis Rubiales, the president of the Spanish football federation, forcibly kissed player Jenni Hermoso on the lips. The player herself later said that the kiss was not consensual.
The kiss was captured by cameras and a wave of outrage swept social media condemning Rubiales’ kiss. His half-hearted apology and refusal to resign over his actions added fire to the flames. However, pressure is mounting on him, and the first measures are coming. FIFA has suspended Rubiales for 90 days and Spain’s top criminal court is investigating whether the kiss constitutes sexual assault.
Strong condemnation of Rubiales’ abuse has come from all sides of the political spectrum and from all corners of society. It shows how quickly Spanish society has embraced feminism. Nevertheless, strongholds of machismo remain, particularly in power structures, as is the case of the football federation. There has also been a minority who think that Rubiales is suffering an unfair trial by public opinion — and he has made the argument part of his defence. This is something which Kate Manne, a writer & philosopher at Cornell, calls himpathy. Her article on the controversy is a great read.