For half a decade, the Iberian Peninsula has been a stronghold of leftist consensus-building as socialists in Spain and Portugal have led minority governments while managing an array of parliamentary allies.
However, in recent days internal disputes have come to the fore in both administrations, casting doubt on their survival and raising broader questions about the left’s ability to forge lasting alliances.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez hosted his Portuguese counterpart António Costa in the town of Trujillo for a bilateral summit last week. The event highlighted the close ties between the two Socialists, with Costa saying that Sánchez “has the loudest voice on the European left, at least of those we have heard in the Council of Europe”.
The Spanish prime minister, meanwhile, described Costa as a master deal-broker and Portugal as “an example of stability” – observations that many are querying given recent developments.
Costa has led Portugal since 2015 when, despite losing a general election, he built an unlikely three-way alliance with the Leftist Bloc (BE) and the Communist Party, allowing him to form a minority administration. Since then, the government, nicknamed the geringonça (or “contraption”) due to its supposedly unwieldy nature, has rolled back much of the austerity imposed by the right in the wake of the euro-zone crisis.
But that united front has become frayed in recent months with clashes over a minimum wage increase, taxes and pensions. The situation turned increasingly acrimonious last Wednesday, when both the BE and the Communists voted with the right against Costa’s proposed budget for 2022, triggering a political crisis.
“The inability to negotiate . . . and the systematic blame game between parties are a sign of political immaturity of the administration and all the various protagonists,” noted political scientist Pedro Adão e Silva.
Sánchez’s minority government has relied on an even broader range of support. Currently in a coalition, the first of Spain’s modern era, with the hard-left Unidas Podemos (UP), he also needs the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalists.
In recent months, there have been several well-documented clashes between Sánchez’s Socialists and UP, with turf battles over draft legislation on issues such as housing and LGBT rights. However, in recent days the discord has reached a new pitch over the government’s handling of a planned labour reform. UP had made the overturning of existing legislation a main objective of this legislature, arguing that it made the labour market more precarious.
But the centre-left Socialists are more cautious on the issue, wanting to secure European Commission approval of any changes made to the law.
Labour relations
“There is a part of the government that does not want to change our model of labour relations,” said an exasperated Yolanda Díaz, UP’s labour minister, in a clear allusion to her Socialist allies.
Meanwhile, a legal imbroglio surrounding UP congressman Alberto Rodríguez has fuelled tensions within the coalition further. Rodríguez was handed a one-and-a-half-month jail sentence for kicking a policeman during a 2014 demonstration, a sanction that was subsequently changed to a fine.
The Socialist speaker of Congress, Meritxell Batet, has barred Rodríguez from taking his parliamentary seat, drawing an outcry from his party. UP claims that his removal from Congress was unlawful. Rodríguez’s defenders have also pointed out that there was no proof he was even present at the demonstration.
All of this is coming just as Sánchez starts trying to push his own budget for next year through the Spanish Congress, amid competing pressures from his allies, which include demands for investment and infrastructure along with political commitments linked to the Catalan separatist cause.
On the right-leaning Spanish news site El Confidencial, José Antonio Zarzalejo said that the administration’s need to horse-trade had turned into “a perverse Persian market whose brazen cheek is alarming”.
However, Sánchez’s oft-proven powers of survival appear likely to prevail and he seems to have the preliminary backing he needs to get the budget approved. With some polls suggesting that the two main parties on the right, the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox, could together form a majority of their own, there is little appetite on the left for a snap election.
At the Trujillo summit, Sánchez insisted that the legislature will run its full course, until 2023.
Costa cannot say the same and a Portuguese general election, which had been due in two years, now looks likely early next year. Polls show that although Costa’s Socialists are out in front, recreating a geringonça majority will be difficult for the left.
Only two years ago, many Spaniards looked west across the border with envy, given Portugal’s relative stability and apparent immunity to the far-right. But those virtues have now been cast in question by the recent infighting and a surge by the populist anti-immigration Chega party.
Sánchez’s difficulties, meanwhile, are also ensuring that Iberia’s standing as an outpost of leftist pragmatism and compromise is being brought under scrutiny.
