MADRID: Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez won the second and decisive vote in the Spanish parliament on Tuesday to be re-elected prime minister, squeezing by on a thin margin of 167 votes in favour to 165 against.
With the vote, Spain’s months-long political blockade involving two parliamentary elections within a year has, for now, come to an end.
But the tiny lead already suggests that Sanchez will not have an easy legislative period ahead of him.
Sanchez’s socialists will rule in coalition with the left-wing alliance Unidas Podemos - the first coalition government in the country’s recent history.
Besides the alliance, Sanchez also signed agreements with several small regional parties, with the largest separatist party in Catalonia, the ERC, keeping its promise to abstain from the vote.
Sanchez had failed to secure the necessary absolute majority of 176 votes in the first vote on Sunday. As prescribed by Spain’s constitution, a second vote had to be taken exactly 48 hours later and required only a simple majority.
The conservative opposition has been enraged mainly because of Sanchez’s deal with the Catalan separatists, who have clashed with the central government following an independence referendum in 2017 that Madrid declared illegal.
The protests in Catalonia have often turned violent and many of the region’s leaders have been imprisoned for their role in the breakaway attempts.
Sanchez had promised the ERC dialogue in return for support in parliament, a move that lead many to criticise him for undermining the constitution.
— dpa
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