The story of this election was going to be that of the rise of the new, alternative parties. The story has been the rise of one new, alternative party: Podemos. There shouldn’t be any surprise that Podemos has won the seats that it has in the regional parliament; the polls had suggested as much. But there is surprise in that it is only Podemos which has planted its feet firmly on alternative political ground. Ciuadanos (C’s) was supposedly going to be there with Podemos – not shoulder to shoulder as in a harmonious, singing-from-the-same-hymn-sheet type of a way but side by side in alternativism. It’s hard to say that the C’s have bombed, as they only got 0.2% of the share of the vote in 2011, but the seats that have been won is well down on what the polls had been predicting.
Why is that Podemos has performed well and the C’s have not? After all, it had seemed as though Podemos might have been running out of steam while the C’s had a fair wind in their sails racing them to honourable parliamentary representation. But perhaps the wind had been no more than a deceptive breeze that was set to change direction. Were the C’s, at the last moment, driven towards the rocks by an electorate concern that it was a Partido Popular in disguise? Did the voters perceive the party as less than humble? Its presidential candidate, Xavier Pericay, and its national leader, Albert Rivera (when he was in Palma last week) had said that the C’s would not make a pact with another party unless it was the most-voted-for party. Had the C’s got ahead of themselves? Had they believed they were stronger than they were?
The C’s underwhelming performance gives the 2015 parliamentary election a complexion that is firmly one of an electorate rejection of the centre-right. The C’s can be described as left on some issues, but on some they are right, and they are on the same tracks as the PP: trilingual teaching, a rejection of nationalist tendencies, a distaste for monolingualism (i.e. Catalan only). The C’s have copped similar electoralm flak to that which we thought would only have been reserved for Bauzá and the PP. But despite what Pericay and Rivera had been saying, perhaps the voters smelt a rat; they weren’t going to put the C’s in a position to get into bed with the PP, and as a result of the PP’s disastrous showing, there will be no bed to get into.
Podemos has come out of the election much as the polls had suggested that it would. It is the third party in the Balearics, though when Més per Menorca’s seats are added to those of Més in Majorca, there isn’t much between the two. The question for Podemos and its leader Alberto Jarabo is what they do with this support? The philosophy of opposition to one of the parties of the reviled “casta” - PSOE – is going to be hard to maintain. Were Podemos to reject a pact with PSOE (and Més), it would be a rejection of those who voted for it as well. The same equation would apply in Palma and the City Council there. Som Palma (which is how Podemos is known in Palma) surely cannot reject the support and not accede to a pact with PSOE and Més. The fact is that if Podemos were of a mind to, it could send Balearics politics into complete and utter chaos by not accepting pacts, be they for the regional parliament or for Palma. But it will not be of such a mind. One thing Podemos is not is a bunch of anarchists. Indeed, a greater moderation in some of its views has not harmed it, though there are certain views which some will not consider to be moderate – the eco-tax, for example. If Podemos side strongly with Més in a PSOE pact, the eco-tax may well become a reality. The alternative, if Podemos were to turn its back on a pact, would be a Bauzá minority government: one of such minority it would have no credibilty. Chaos would reign were this to occur, though the chances of Bauzá being able to form a minority government must be remote. Would the deputies in parliament, the new ones, agree to his investiture? This would he highly doubtful.
The assumption is that Podemos will combine with Més and PSOE to give a majority coalition. While there are some indications as to what Podemos wants, the fact is that no one, and this would include Francina Armengol, PSOE’s leader, and perhaps even Biel Barceló of Més, knows how Podemos might act in government. It is the grand experiment, and the experiment is about to begin.
The surprises
The PP having suffered its worst ever performance in a regional election, where does this leave Bauzá? A possible minority government surely has no legs. Talk of his being removed from the party leadership has more legs. It is pure hypothesis to suggest that the PP would have performed better had Bauzá been removed some months ago, but he has proven to be a liability. The PP need to learn a lesson:don’t mess too much with tradition, especially that to do with language. If Bauzá isn’t kicked out, something will be very wrong.
While the PP and to a lesser extent the C’s are the losers of this election, the clear winners, in addition to Podemos, are Més and El Pi. The latter had seemed as though it might even fail to get a single seat. Its performance has come, therefore, as a genuine surprise, and arguably it has been its regionalist philosophy, allied to an otherwise centrist agenda, that has added to the C’s woes. El Pi might not have the strong nationalist message of one of its progenitors, the old Unió Mallorquina, but it is a proof that this regionalist-nationalist sentiment is alive (something that Bauzá failed to appreciate or rather did appreciate and sought to crush).
Més is further proof of this sentiment, even more so than El Pi. Its leader in Majorca, Biel Barceló, has declared the election result an “historic” one. It is but this is mainly because of what has happened in Minorca where Més per Menorca has genuinely made history by gaining the seats in parliament that it has. That Minorca has moved towards a nationalist left agenda speaks for more than simply opposition to the PP and Bauzá. The greater strength, relatively, of support for Més in Minorca may well point to a separate dynamic there.
This election was always going to be an interesting one. Much of the interest lay with how Podemos would fare. Now we know. Podemos’s performance is not a surprise, PSOE’s very moderate performance is also not a surprise, but the PP’s perhaps is. Had we expected it to do as badly as it has?