PSOE leader, Pedro Sánchez, will assume the role of Prime Minister of Spain, after the motion of censure approved today, by the Spanish parliamentconsolidating the fall of Mariano Rajoi’s government.
A majority of 180 deputies out of 250 voted in favor of the motion of censure. Subsequently, the leader of the socialists, Pedro Sánchez, assumes the presidency of the Madrid government.
Pedro Sánchez will now lead the government’s destiny in what remains of the legislature, until 2020, after Rajoy has led the country’s destiny for the last six years. All that is missing is official communication to the king, Felipe VI. This communication must be made by the president of the Congress of Deputies today, so that the PSOE leader can take office next Monday.
Despite only having 84 of the 350 deputies in the Spanish parliament, the socialist party (PSOE) managed to gather the support of 180 deputies, including those from Unidos Podemos (extreme left, 67), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC, separatists, 9 ), the Democratic and European Party of Catalonia (PDeCAT, separatists, 8), the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV, 5), Compromís (Valencian nationalists, 4), EH Bildu (Basque separatist, 2), and Nueva Canarias (nationalist, 1).
The field against the motion had 169 votes divided by deputies from the PP (134), Cidadãos (liberal right, 32), the Union of the People of Navarra (UPN, regional, 2) and Foro Asturias (regional, 1). The only deputy from the Canary Coalition (regional) abstained.
Defeated in the last elections and then expelled from the leadership of his party before returning through the big door, socialist Pedro Sánchez has just won a risky bet to reach power in Spain.
The Spanish daily El País recalls that this 46-year-old former Economics professor sees reward for his obstinacy in obtaining all support to approve a motion of censure against the conservative leader and after leading a wave of indignation over the judicial conviction of the PP of Mariano Rajoy in a corruption case.
“Your loneliness, Mr. Rajoy, represents the epitaph of a political era, yours, that has already ended,” said Sánchez at the Congress of Deputies.
A lover of politics since he was young, according to his classmates, Sánchez was a municipal councilor in Madrid between 2004 and 2009, when he became a deputy and his career took off.
Propelled in 2014 to the leadership of a weakened PSOE due to the party’s primaries, he fell behind Rajoy in the December 2015 elections, after having tried to form a government with the emerging parties of Podemos and Cidadãos, but the initiative fell apart.
In the repeat of the June 2016 elections, the PSOE recorded its worst result since the reestablishment of Spanish democracy in 1977.
Sánchez was deposed by an internal rebellion in his party that blamed him for the bad electoral results, and returned through the big door in May 2017, when the activists returned him to the leadership of his party.
Pedro Sánchez will be remembered by the PP for causing the downfall of a head of government who had already survived several crises, and “will remain in the history of Spain as the Judas of politics”, recently stated Fernando Martínez-Maillo, number three of the conservative formation, recalled by the newspaper El País.