The Socialist Party in Spain lost it second vote of confidence in parliament on Friday.
Party leader Pedro Sanchez’s proposal to govern was rejected by 219 votes. The 131 votes in favour came from the Socialists, Ciudadanos and a very small political party from the Canary Islands.
The country’s political parties now have a deadline of 2 May to agree a coalition with sufficient votes to govern. If no power-sharing agreement is reached, new elections will be called.
Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been in charge since the indecisive election results of 20 December which gave his Popular Party the most votes at 123 MPs but not enough to govern alone.
In what seemed like weekly fare both before and after that election, the PP was humiliated by frequent bribery and corruption cases as greedy politicians found it impossible to resist the free money provided by the tax payer.
Rajoy failed to form a coalition with enough votes to govern and now runner-up Sanchez appears to be walking that same path.
He did attract newcomer and centre-right Ciudadanos, but the PP and Podemos, the new far-left party of Pablo Iglesias, voted against.
Anti-austerity Podemos has said it is ready for talks with the Socialists if they drop their agreement with Ciudadanos, which it sees as too economically liberal.
“Today Mr Iglesias has betrayed the millions of voters who voted for change and he is the only one who ultimately is responsible for Rajoy continuing to be head of the government,” Sanchez said.
Podemos’ second in command, Inigo Errejon, said before the vote that it was still possible to form a left-leaning coalition government by recruiting the support or abstention of small regional Basque and Catalan separatist parties.
A new round of elections would leave Spain with an acting government of limited power for several additional months.
Since Franco died in 1975, Spain has been governed by either the conservative PP or the Socialists. The December election brought two new parties into the equation, Podemos and Ciudadanos.
