The victory of Pedro Sanchez and his Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in April  this year was supposed to usher in a new era of political stability after the sudden decline and fall of the People’s Party (PP). Yet PSOE’s sizable seat tally fell just short of a majority, and subsequent coalition negotiations collapsed into acrimony and finger-pointing across the political spectrum.

The ultimate result was another general election, which took place last weekend and produced a similar tally for PSOE.

Will the story be the same this time around?

Background

A total of 176 seats is needed to form a government in Spain’s 350-seat parliament.

The election result was a middling one for PSOE, which took 120 seats – down 3 from its April result – and still requires the support of at least one other party to form a government.

Podemos, another left-wing party that was once viewed as a natural coalition partner for PSOE, shed 7 seats from earlier this year to come away with 35 seats.

The People’s Party (PP) saw a limited recovery from the corruption scandal that led to its drubbing in April, picking up 21 seats to bring its total to 87.

But the undisputed winner was the far-right Vox party, which picked up 28 seats from April to become the third-largest party in parliament with 52 seats. Vox’s surge can be attributed to three factors: 1) the ongoing Catalonia crisis, encapsulated by recent violent protests over the jailing of regional politicians on charges of rebellion; 2) the culture/identity wars stemming from the PSOE decision to exhume the remains of divisive dictator Francisco Franco and transport them to a more modest grounds; and 3) growing disillusionment with the glacial pace of ‘politics as usual’ and desire to punish establishment elites.