Spain’s Socialist-led minority government has comfortably seen off a no-confidence vote tabled by the far-right Vox party, as the country prepares for regional and municipal elections in two months’ time and a general election before the end of the year.
Although Vox’s motion, which was debated in congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, was never likely to attract support from other parties, Vox had been hoping to capitalise on public anger over the government’s botched sexual offences legislation – which has resulted in reduced prison terms for hundreds of convicted felons – and its overhaul of sedition legislation.
However, as had been widely anticipated, the move was defeated by 53 votes to 201, with 91 abstentions. The conservative People’s party (PP), which is ahead of the Socialists in the polls and seeking to return to the centre ground under its newish leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, chose to abstain rather than be seen as cosying up to Vox.
Vox, which has criticised the sexual offences reforms and accused the government of changing Spain’s sedition legislation to placate the pro-independence Catalan party on which it relies for support in congress, defended the decision to table the motion. The party has been hoping for a bump in the polls after recent surveys suggested it was losing the momentum that carried it into the national parliament four years ago.
The party’s leader, Santiago Abascal, said he was proud Vox had forced a debate that had showed Spain had “the worst government in its history” and said he was “worried” by the PP’s refusal to back the motion. “We’ve accomplished our mission,” Abascal said after Wednesday’s vote. “There were more than enough reasons for this vote of no confidence, but political and electoral calculations weren’t among them.”
The PP, which voted against Vox’s last no-confidence motion, in 2020, on the grounds that the far-right party was practising a politics based on “fear, anger, resentment and revenge”, was more circumspect in its language this time. It did, however, lament the fact that Vox had handed the Socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez, “a smokescreen for his scandals”.
Vox’s choice of candidate to replace Sánchez as prime minister had attracted considerable attention. Despite disagreeing with many of the party’s views, Ramón Tamames, an 89-year-old economist writer and former communist, accepted the role because of his political and patriotic convictions. He said on Wednesday he was “very satisfied and grateful” to have been able to play his part.
During the previous day’s debate, the prime minister told Tamames he was sad to see him “helping to whitewash a party that rejects equality between men and women”. Sánchez also seized the opportunity to highlight his government’s achievements and to criticise his opponents for their nostalgia.
“This is a motion to stop Spain moving forwards; to make it go backwards,” he said. “In the PP’s case, that’s 10 years. In Vox’s case, that’s half a century.”
