Follow our live coverage of election day in Spain, where voters are going to the polls for the fourth time since 2015. Around 37 million citizens are being asked to elect 350 members of Congress and 208 senators in an election that surveys show is likely to yield a fractured parliament.
“Let us strengthen democracy through our votes,” said Pedro Sánchez, the caretaker prime minister, as he cast his vote on Sunday morning.
“We will reach out to the Socialist Party (PSOE). Any reproaches are a thing of the past,” said Pablo Iglesias, head of the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos, who unsuccessfully attempted to craft a governing coalition with Sánchez after the previous general election of April 28.
Since 2017, Spanish politics have been defined by a lack of parliamentary majorities and an inability by politicians to reach governing deals. Surveys suggest that the outcome of today’s vote will be an even more fractured lower house, with less of a difference between the left-wing and right-wing blocs. The far right is also expected to make significant gains.
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“Today is the second round of [the previous general election of] April 28 to unblock a stalemate that is already affecting the economic, social and territorial situation. That is why it is essential for Spaniards to come together at the ballox boxes to choose between continuity and change, and to create a clear mandate for stability and a future for Spain,” said Pablo Casado, the candidate for the conservative Popular Party (PP), in a message on Twitter.
“The essential thing is for each person to cast his or her vote thinking about what kind of future they want for the country,” said María Jesús Montero, the finance minister in the caretaker government, after voting in Seville. Montero rejected the notion that this repeat election is providing the far right with a new opportunity to increase its presence in parliament. “During the campaign we presented the alternative to overcome the stalemate imposed by other parties,” she added. With reporting by Eva Sáiz. Photo credit: Alejandro Ruesga
The acting public works minister and organization secretary for the Socialist Party (PSOE), José Luis Ábalos, voted in Valencia with “the same excitement as though I were 30 or 35 years younger,” he said. Speaking in the company of his wife Carolina Perles and their six-year-old son Pablo, Ábalos said it was important to vote “for stability,” Ferran Bono reports. In an interview with EL PAÍS earlier this week, the caretaker PM Pedro Sánchez said that the only way to ensure that Spain gets a government is to vote for the PSOE. Photo credit: Mónica Torres.
Rocío Monasterio, head of the Madrid branch of the far-right party Vox, said she is “very excited” about this election and that she trusts Spaniards will “have the drive to go out and vote to make change happen,” Europa Press reported. Surveys suggest that Vox could nearly double its presence in the lower house, and earn up to 46 seats from the 24 it secured on April 28.
The Basque premier, Iñigo Urkullu, cast his vote this morning in the city of Durango and said he hopes that the election “will end four years of uncertainty” and usher in “a new cycle” that will be “beneficial to Euskadi [the Basque Country].”
Police officers are guarding the National Police headquarters on Via Laietana in Barcelona. There is mobile security fencing and the nearby streets have been blocked off, Laura Cercós reports. Thousands of officers have been deployed in Catalonia this weekend to ensure there is no street violence in the wake of last month’s weeklong rioting.
Voting has been taking place “with just a few absolutely minor incidents to report, which are normal in these kinds of processes,” said Interior Minister deputy secretary Isabel Goicoechea and the secretary of state for communications, Miguel Ángel Oliver, at a news conference at the National Data Center in Madrid. These incidents mostly involve delays opening some polling stations, and a temporary power cut at a polling station in Asturias, the news agency EFE reported.