A
motion of no confidence
A motion of no confidence, also variously called a vote of no confidence, no-confidence motion, motion of confidence, or vote of confidence, is a statement or vote about whether a person in a position of responsibility like in government or mana ...
in the
Spanish government
gl, Goberno de España eu, Espainiako Gobernua
, image =
, caption = Logo of the Government of Spain
, headerstyle = background-color: #efefef
, label1 = Role
, data1 = Executive power
, label2 = Established
, da ...
of
Mariano Rajoy
Mariano Rajoy Brey (; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party lead ...
was debated and voted in the
Congress of Deputies
The Congress of Deputies ( es, link=no, Congreso de los Diputados, italic=unset) is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch. The Congress meets in the Palacio de las Cortes, Madrid, Palace of the Parliament () in Ma ...
between 13 and 14 June 2017. It was brought by
Unidos Podemos
Unidas Podemos (), formerly called Unidos Podemos () and also known in English as United We Can, is a democratic socialist electoral alliance formed by Podemos, United Left, and other left-wing to far-left parties in May to contest the 2016 Sp ...
leader
Pablo Iglesias as a result of a corruption case involving high-ranking
People's Party (PP) officials, amid accusations of maneuvers from the Rajoy government to influence the
judicial system
The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...
in order to cover-up the scandal. This was the third vote of no confidence held in
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
since the country's
transition to democracy
Democratization, or democratisation, is the transition to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. It may be a hybrid regime in transition from an authoritarian regime to a full ...
—after the unsuccessful
1980 and
1987 ones—as well as the first not to be registered by the main opposition party at the time.
The
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( es, Partido Socialista Obrero Español ; PSOE ) is a social-democraticThe PSOE is described as a social-democratic party by numerous sources:
*
*
*
* political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in gov ...
(PSOE),
Citizens
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
(Cs) and the
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) announced their rejection to any candidate proposed by Podemos, meaning that the motion was unlikely to succeed. These parties criticized the motion in that it was aimed more as a propaganda move to meddle in the ongoing
PSOE leadership election rather than a genuine and realistic attempt to bring down Rajoy's government. Nonetheless, it garnered the support of
Compromís,
Republican Left of Catalonia
The Republican Left of Catalonia ( ca, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC; ; generically branded as ) is a Catalan independence movement, pro-Catalan independence, social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Catalonia, p ...
(ERC) and
EH Bildu
EH Bildu, short for Euskal Herria Bildu ( en, link=yes, Basque Country Gather or Basque Country Unite) is a left-wing, Basque nationalist, pro-independence political coalition active in the Spanish autonomous communities of Basque Country, Nava ...
.
The motion was defeated with a total of 82 votes in support, the negative vote of PP, Cs,
Navarrese People's Union
The Navarrese People's Union ( es, Unión del Pueblo Navarro), abbreviated to UPN, is a regional conservative political party in Navarre, Spain. Until 2008, it was a fraternal party of the People's Party (PP), acting as the latter's Navarrese bran ...
(UPN),
Canarian Coalition
The Canarian Coalition ( es, Coalición Canaria, CC) is a regionalist, Canarian nationalist political party in Spain operating in the Canary Islands. The party's aim is for greater autonomy for the islands but not independence. It has been label ...
(CCa) and
Asturias Forum (FAC)—totalling 170 votes against—and the abstentions of PSOE, the
Catalan European Democratic Party
The Catalan European Democratic Party ( ca, Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català, PDeCAT, sometimes stylized as PDECat), initially branded as the Catalan Democratic Party ( ca, Partit Demòcrata Català, PDC), is a liberal political party in Spain ...
(PDeCAT), PNV and
New Canaries
New Canaries ( es, Nueva Canarias) is a social democratic, Canarian nationalist political party representing the Canary Islands territory of Spain. The party holds Observer status in the European Free Alliance
The European Free Alliance (E ...
(NCa)—totalling 97. While the initiative was unsuccessful, it revealed the weakness of Rajoy's government as support votes and abstentions added up to more votes than Rajoy could command on his behalf. This would set the grounds for a similar,
successful motion in May 2018 seeing the downfall of Rajoy's government and the election of
Pedro Sánchez
Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón (; born 29 February 1972) is a Spanish politician who has been Prime Minister of Spain since June 2018. He has also been Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since June 2017, having pr ...
as
Prime Minister of Spain
The prime minister of Spain, officially president of the Government ( es, link=no, Presidente del Gobierno), is the head of government of Spain. The office was established in its current form by the Constitution of 1978 and it was first regula ...
.
Background
Rajoy's second government was sworn into office on 31 October 2016, after a
ten-month political deadlock, two general elections and the
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( es, Partido Socialista Obrero Español ; PSOE ) is a social-democraticThe PSOE is described as a social-democratic party by numerous sources:
*
*
*
* political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in gov ...
's (PSOE) ultimate decision not to block
Mariano Rajoy
Mariano Rajoy Brey (; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party lead ...
's investiture bid following an
internal crisis that had led to
Pedro Sánchez
Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón (; born 29 February 1972) is a Spanish politician who has been Prime Minister of Spain since June 2018. He has also been Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since June 2017, having pr ...
's resignation as party leader. However, the resulting government was a
minority one, and throughout the ensuing months it struggled to get its bills passed into law. Furthermore, the ruling
People's Party (PP) came under increasing political pressure after a corruption scandal in
Murcia
Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country. It has a population of 460,349 inhabitants in 2021 (about one ...
had forced the resignation of
regional president Pedro Antonio Sánchez.
In April 2017, after only five months into its term, the PP was shaken by a succession of events that damaged the party's image. Just as
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Rajoy was called to testify as witness at the
Gürtel graft trial, a new case of alleged corruption was unveiled (dubbed as "Lezo"), joining the already ongoing investigations into the Púnica and Gürtel scandals. Operation Lezo resulted in the arrest of former
Madrilenian president Ignacio González, who was accused of diverting millions of euros from the public treasury into tax havens and to pay off the regional party's debts during his tenure as Madrid premier. The scope of the new scandal reached heights never seen in Spanish politics. Several companies—namely
OHL OHL or Ohl may refer to:
Initialisms
*Latvian Hockey Higher League, known in Latvian as the ''Optibet hokeja līga''
*Oberste Heeresleitung, the Supreme Army Command of Germany in World War I
*Obrascón Huarte Lain, a Spanish construction company
* ...
,
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...
,
Indra
Indra (; Sanskrit: इन्द्र) is the king of the devas (god-like deities) and Svarga (heaven) in Hindu mythology. He is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war. volumes/ref> I ...
and
Canal de Isabel II Canal de Isabel II (CYII) is the only company that manages the water supplies for Madrid, Spain. It is owned by the Autonomous Community of Madrid
The Community of Madrid (; es, Comunidad de Madrid ) is one of the seventeen autonomous communiti ...
, among others—suspect of having illegally financed the
PP's Madrilenian branch, had their headquarters in Spain registered by the police in search of incriminating documentation. Party veteran and former González's boss
Esperanza Aguirre
Esperanza Aguirre y Gil de Biedma (; born 3 January 1952) is a Spanish politician. As member of the People's Party (PP), she served as President of the Senate between 1999 and 2002 (becoming the first female politician to have held the post), a ...
resigned from her remaining political offices after seeing many of her former close advisers imprisoned or indicted in a number of judicial procedures.
The leaking of a series of recordings that involved González and various high-ranking PP and government officials—including former
Valencian president Eduardo Zaplana and
justice minister
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
Rafael Catalá
Rafael Catalá Polo (born 21 June 1961) is a Spanish politician and member of the People's Party. He has been Minister of Justice and First Notary of the Kingdom since September 2014, and was additionally interim Minister of Public Works betw ...
—unveiled a plot from the
interior and justice ministries
to cover-up the scandal, seriously putting
judicial independence Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent from the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government or from private or partisan inte ...
in Spain into question. In one of the leaked recordings, González pointed to a tape that would allegedly show Rajoy receiving bribes from a businessman, and that this would have been used by
Intereconomía CEO
Julio Ariza
Julio Ariza Irigoyen, born in Carcastillo, Navarra, Spain in 1957 is a Spanish entrepreneur who currently chairs the Grupo Intereconomia. He was part of the Spanish People's Party in Catalonia with Alejo Vidal-Quadras and an MP in the regional ...
in the past to blackmail him. Concurrently, the anti-corruption chief prosecutor,
Manuel Moix
Manuel Moix is a Spanish lawyer. After serving as a public prosecutor in the Community of Madrid, he was appointed Spain's "top anti-corruption prosecutor" from February 2017.
He resigned on 1 June 2017, after admitting he owned 25% of a Panaman ...
—revealed by police wiretaps to have been favoured for the job by Ignacio González himself—was accused of trying to stop investigations into the PP graft accusations.
Secretary of State for Security José Antonio Nieto—
Juan Ignacio Zoido's deputy in the interior ministry—came under pressure after being accused of revealing details of the ongoing investigations to González's brother in a private meeting held on 8 March 2017.
By mid-May, the string of scandals had splattered
Cristina Cifuentes
María Cristina Cifuentes Cuencas (born 1 July 1964) is a former Spanish politician from the People's Party. She was the President of the Community of Madrid from 24 June 2015 to her 25 April 2018 resignation. From 16 January 2012 to 13 April 2 ...
, incumbent president of Madrid, who was accused by the
Civil Guard of having been involved in the contract-awarding procedures that led to her party's illegal financing between 2007 and 2012. By this time, it was also concluded that Esperanza Aguirre had won the
2007 and
2011 regional elections unfairly, with her campaign budgets well above those legally declared, through a system that "hurted political pluralism". Allegedly, these illegal funds were also used by Mariano Rajoy's campaign in the
2008 general election. Suspicions of embezzlement in the
Community of Madrid
The Community of Madrid (; es, Comunidad de Madrid ) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and of the Central Plateau (''Meseta Central''). Its capital and largest munici ...
reached as far back as 2001, during
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón Jiménez (born 11 December 1958) is a Spanish politician and former Minister of Justice. He was mayor of Madrid between 2003 and 2011. A stalwart of the conservative People's Party (PP), he has previously been a leadin ...
's tenure, whose cabinet at the time was put under investigation by the Civil Guard. In the meantime, a separate investigation by the
National Police National Police may refer to the national police forces of several countries:
*Afghanistan: Afghan National Police
*Haiti: Haitian National Police
*Colombia: National Police of Colombia
*Cuba: Cuban National Police
*East Timor: National Police of ...
into the ongoing scandals involving the family of former
Catalan president
The President of the Government of Catalonia ( ca, President de la Generalitat de Catalunya, ) is one of the bodies that the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia stipulates as part of the Generalitat de Catalunya, others being the Parliament, the gov ...
Jordi Pujol
Jordi Pujol Soley (, born 9 June 1930) is a Catalan politician who was the leader of the party Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) from 1974 to 2003, and President of the Generalitat de Catalunya from 1980 to 2003.
Early life
Pujol was ...
linked former
labour minister Manuel Pimentel and Ignacio López del Hierro, husband of
María Dolores de Cospedal
María Dolores Cospedal García (born 13 December 1965) is a Spanish politician. A member of the People's Party (PP), she served as President of Castile-La Mancha from 2011 to 2015 and as Minister of Defence of the Government of Spain from 201 ...
—incumbent
defence minister and PP secretary-general—to another corruption plot in Africa, with connections to the Lezo scandal.
As a result of the scandals and Rajoy's refusal to take any action,
Unidos Podemos
Unidas Podemos (), formerly called Unidos Podemos () and also known in English as United We Can, is a democratic socialist electoral alliance formed by Podemos, United Left, and other left-wing to far-left parties in May to contest the 2016 Sp ...
members—comprising
Podemos,
United Left,
En Comú Podem
En Comú Podem ( en, "In Common We Can", ECP) is an electoral coalition in Catalonia, originally formed in October 2015 by Unidas Podemos, Barcelona en Comú, Initiative for Catalonia Greens, United and Alternative Left, and Equo, and led by the ...
and
En Marea
En Marea (translated in English as "In Tide") is a political party and former political alliance integrated by Podemos, Anova, United Left of Galicia, and some municipal alliances that participated in the 2015 Spanish local elections ( Marea Atl ...
—announced on 27 April that they would table a motion of no confidence and would request support for it from PSOE and other parties.
The rivalries between the parties in opposition, however, meant that the initiative was unlikely to succeed: PSOE rejected the motion and accused Podemos leader
Pablo Iglesias of "bad faith" and of interfering within the party's ongoing
leadership primary election, whereas
Citizens
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
(Cs)—on which the Rajoy government relied for
confidence and supply
In a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system, confidence and supply are required for a ruling cabinet to retain power in the lower house.
A confidence-and-supply agreement is one whereby a party or independent members of par ...
support—labeled the move as "a circus". The
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) also voiced its rejection to the maneuver.
Nonetheless, the Socialists were put in a difficult situation, as opposing the motion would see them rallying behind Rajoy's government amid the ongoing scandals at a time when they were still without a leader.
Legal provisions
The
Spanish Constitution of 1978
The Spanish Constitution (Spanish, Asturleonese, and gl, Constitución Española; eu, Espainiako Konstituzioa; ca, Constitució Espanyola; oc, Constitucion espanhòla) is the democratic law that is supreme in the Kingdom of Spain. It was ...
required for motions of no confidence to be proposed by at least one-tenth of the
Congress of Deputies
The Congress of Deputies ( es, link=no, Congreso de los Diputados, italic=unset) is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch. The Congress meets in the Palacio de las Cortes, Madrid, Palace of the Parliament () in Ma ...
—35 out of 350. Following the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
model, votes of no confidence in Spain were
constructive
Although the general English usage of the adjective constructive is "helping to develop or improve something; helpful to someone, instead of upsetting and negative," as in the phrase "constructive criticism," in legal writing ''constructive'' has ...
, so the motion was required to include an alternative candidate for
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
. For a motion of no confidence to be successful, it had to be passed by an
absolute majority
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority r ...
in the Congress of Deputies. A minimum period of five days from the motion's registration (dubbed as "cooling period") was required to pass before it could come up for a vote, but no maximum was established. Other parties were entitled to submit alternative motions within the first two days from the registration.
Concurrently, the Prime Minister was barred from dissolving the
Cortes Generales
The Cortes Generales (; en, Spanish Parliament, lit=General Courts) are the bicameral legislative chambers of Spain, consisting of the Congress of Deputies (the lower house), and the Senate (the upper house).
The Congress of Deputies meets ...
and calling a general election while a motion of no confidence was pending. If the motion was successful, the incumbent prime minister and their government were required to submit their resignation to the
Monarch
A monarch is a head of stateWebster's II New College DictionarMonarch Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority ...
, while the candidate proposed in the motion was automatically considered to have the confidence of the Congress of Deputies and immediately appointed as prime minister. If unsuccessful, the signatories of the motion were barred from submitting another during the same session.
The procedure for motions of no confidence was regulated within Articles 175 to 179 of the Standing Orders of the Congress of Deputies, which provided for the debate on the motion starting with its defence by one of the signatory members without any time limitations, to be followed by an also time-unlimited speech by the nominated candidate to explain their political programme. Subsequently, spokespeople from the different parliamentary groups in Congress were allowed to speak for thirty minutes, with an opportunity to reply or rectify themselves for ten minutes. Members of the government were allowed to take the floor and speak at any time of their request during the debate.
Opinion polls
Opinion polling conducted in the days leading to and during the events of the vote of no confidence showed a split support to the motion.
Events
Prelude and debate
![2017MotionPodemosLogo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/2017MotionPodemosLogo.png)
On 19 May 2017, the motion was formally registered by thirty-seven
Unidos Podemos
Unidas Podemos (), formerly called Unidos Podemos () and also known in English as United We Can, is a democratic socialist electoral alliance formed by Podemos, United Left, and other left-wing to far-left parties in May to contest the 2016 Sp ...
deputies, with
Pablo Iglesias as the proposed candidate for prime minister. Iglesias invited the
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( es, Partido Socialista Obrero Español ; PSOE ) is a social-democraticThe PSOE is described as a social-democratic party by numerous sources:
*
*
*
* political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in gov ...
(PSOE) into an agreement but acknowledged that the initiative was likely to be defeated, claiming to know that he would not "come out as prime minister from this vote of no confidence, but it is my responsibility", despite the move entailing "enormous risks": while previous motions of no confidence held since the
Spanish transition to democracy had also been defeated, the one in
1980 was successful in promoting the figure of
Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish lawyer, professor, and politician, who was the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997, and the 3rd Prime Minister of Spain since the ...
—said to be one of many contributing factors to his landslide win in the
1982 election—whereas the one in
1987 signaled the twilight of
Antonio Hernández Mancha's political career. The motion promoters held a demonstration in
Puerta del Sol
The Puerta del Sol (English: "Gate of the Sun") is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre ('' Km 0'') of the radial network of Spanish roads. The square also contains the famous clo ...
,
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
, on 20 May, where thousands gathered in support of the initiative.
Compromís enthusiastically welcomed the motion and announced their support to Unidos Podemos.
Republican Left of Catalonia
The Republican Left of Catalonia ( ca, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC; ; generically branded as ) is a Catalan independence movement, pro-Catalan independence, social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Catalonia, p ...
(ERC) was sympathetic to the initiative, but conditioned it on Podemos supporting an
independence referendum
An independence referendum is a type of referendum in which the residents of a territory decide whether the territory should become an independent sovereign state. An independence referendum that results in a vote for independence does not alwa ...
to be held in Catalonia. This same condition was demanded by the
Catalan European Democratic Party
The Catalan European Democratic Party ( ca, Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català, PDeCAT, sometimes stylized as PDECat), initially branded as the Catalan Democratic Party ( ca, Partit Demòcrata Català, PDC), is a liberal political party in Spain ...
(PDeCAT), which nonetheless remained more skeptical and argued that they would "evaluate the
pros and cons" of supporting the motion before taking a decision.
EH Bildu
EH Bildu, short for Euskal Herria Bildu ( en, link=yes, Basque Country Gather or Basque Country Unite) is a left-wing, Basque nationalist, pro-independence political coalition active in the Spanish autonomous communities of Basque Country, Nava ...
showed their willingness to support the initiative if Podemos reassured their commitment to the "
right to decide", which they had already contemplated in their election manifesto. The motion also received the support of
trade union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
s
UGT and
CCOO, which voiced their "disappointment and sadness" with opposition parties not backing it.
The PSOE initially announced that they would vote against the motion, arguing that it was an "intrusion" within the party's ongoing primaries. All three candidates for the party's leadership—
Susana Díaz,
Pedro Sánchez
Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón (; born 29 February 1972) is a Spanish politician who has been Prime Minister of Spain since June 2018. He has also been Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since June 2017, having pr ...
and
Patxi López
Francisco Javier "Patxi" López Álvarez (; born 4 October 1959) is a Spanish politician serving as Member of the Congress of Deputies and chair of the Constitutional Committee.
Previously, he has served as President of the Autonomous Communi ...
—rejected Podemos's move, perceiving it as being directed to their party rather than to Rajoy's. Interim PSOE leader
Javier Fernández rejected Iglesias's attempts to discuss the initiative, despite the latter's offerings to back down in favour of a PSOE candidate.
Citizens
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
(Cs) ruled out supporting the motion and dubbed it as a "circus number",
whereas the PP mocked the initiative as an "absurdity". PP's electoral partners,
Navarrese People's Union
The Navarrese People's Union ( es, Unión del Pueblo Navarro), abbreviated to UPN, is a regional conservative political party in Navarre, Spain. Until 2008, it was a fraternal party of the People's Party (PP), acting as the latter's Navarrese bran ...
(UPN) and
Asturias Forum (FAC), were widely expected to oppose the motion, whereas
Canarian Coalition
The Canarian Coalition ( es, Coalición Canaria, CC) is a regionalist, Canarian nationalist political party in Spain operating in the Canary Islands. The party's aim is for greater autonomy for the islands but not independence. It has been label ...
(CCa) and
New Canaries
New Canaries ( es, Nueva Canarias) is a social democratic, Canarian nationalist political party representing the Canary Islands territory of Spain. The party holds Observer status in the European Free Alliance
The European Free Alliance (E ...
(NCa) hinted at their rejection as well. Members from the
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) dubbed the initiative as "an absolute awkwardness" and criticized Podemos for announcing the motion to the media without discussing it first with the rest of parties, while also stating that they were "not very convinced" of having Iglesias as alternative candidate to Rajoy.
A new political scenario arose after Pedro Sánchez's sudden re-election as PSOE leader on 21 May, after he had hinted at registering a future motion of no confidence on Rajoy "if it was to win it" during his leadership election campaign. However, he made it clear that his party would not support Iglesias's one, both because the PSOE and not Unidos Podemos was the main opposition party to the PP and because "the numbers were not there" at the time for the motion to succeed. On 22 May, Pablo Iglesias offered Sánchez to withdraw Podemos's motion if he registered his own instead, but the PSOE rejected it and pointed to an abstention on the grounds that, while the party agreed with the motivations behind the motion, it did not with the way in which it had been brought forward. Some commented that, actually, Sánchez agreed with the motion but was privately upset that the initiative had not been his, while it was said that he had plans to table a motion of no confidence of his own by the end of 2017, awaiting in the meantime to consolidate its hold over the party.
The parliamentary debate and the vote on the motion were scheduled for 13 and 14 June. It started with a two-hour-long speech by Unidos Podemos spokesperson,
Irene Montero
Irene María Montero Gil, MP (born 13 February 1988) is a Spanish politician and psychologist, member of the Podemos party. She currently serves as the Minister of Equality of Spain since 13 January 2020. She is the partner of Pablo Iglesia ...
, and was followed by a surprise intervention from Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy
Mariano Rajoy Brey (; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party lead ...
, who had been widely expected not to participate in the debate himself. Pablo Iglesias's speech as candidate followed shortly thereafter, with both Rajoy and Iglesias staging a parliamentary duel which lasted for hours. Rajoy claimed that "a government of Iglesias would be a punishment for Spain", whereas Iglesias reminded the PP about their corruption scandals and offered the PSOE an alliance in the future that helped bring the PP government down. The new PSOE spokesperson,
José Luis Ábalos
José Luis Ábalos Meco (born 9 December 1959) is a Spanish politician of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party serving as Member of the Congress of Deputies since 2009. He has served as minister of Development (of Transport, Mobility and Urban A ...
, maintained his party's stance on the motion and reminded Iglesias of his own stance during
Sánchez's failed investiture in 2016, but thanked him "on his tone" and picked up his "invitation" for an understanding, without clarifying whether Sánchez would table a motion in the foreseeable future. ERC's spokesperson
Joan Tardà praised Iglesias for his initiative and announced his party's support to the motion, whereas
EH Bildu
EH Bildu, short for Euskal Herria Bildu ( en, link=yes, Basque Country Gather or Basque Country Unite) is a left-wing, Basque nationalist, pro-independence political coalition active in the Spanish autonomous communities of Basque Country, Nava ...
announced a "critical yes" on the grounds that it was "a priority to oust the most corrupt party in Europe from government" while demanding Iglesias his full support to the right of self-determination.
Vote
Aftermath
As expected, the motion was defeated on 14 June 2017, having gathered the support of Unidos Podemos, Compromís, ERC and EH Bildu for a total of 82 support votes, 170 against and 97 abstentions. As a result, it became the third motion of confidence since the Spanish transition to democracy to be defeated, after the unsuccessful
1980 and
1987 ones. It was also the first motion of no confidence in Spain not to be registered by the main opposition party at the time, a feat that would be repeated three years later when
Vox registered
their own motion on the
government of Pedro Sánchez.
Despite the motion's defeat, both Unidos Podemos and PSOE hinted during the debate at the possibility of a future understanding that could see them both working in a joint motion in the future. Such an invitation was offered by Iglesias who, during a reply to PSOE's spokesperson José Luis Ábalos, stated that Podemos would "commit
hemselveswith the new PSOE in search of an alternative majority" and urged the Socialists to "work together on a motion of no confidence". Eventually, one such motion would be tabled by Sánchez
in May 2018 after the unveiling of a court ruling that found the PP to have profitted from the illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme of the
Gürtel case
The Gürtel case is a political corruption scandal in Spain, which implicates officers of the People's Party (PP), Spain's major conservative party, some of whom have been forced to resign or have been suspended. Gürtel is one of the largest ...
and confirmed the existence of an illegal accounting and financing structure that ran in parallel with the party's official one. The motion would be successful, leading to the downfall of Rajoy's government and the election of Pedro Sánchez as new prime minister.
References
{{Votes of no confidence in Spain
2017 in Spain
2017 in Madrid
June 2017 events in Spain
Votes of no confidence in Spain