Spanish King confirms re-election date of June 26

It was always likely to end this way, but now King Felipe VI of Spain has confirmed that the country will have to go once again to the polls on June 26 to recast their votes in a repeat of the general election…

The last vote, held on December 20 last year, did not produce a majority margin for any single party, and six months of discussions have not yielded a workable coalition.

Hence, as the head of state, the Spanish king has exercised his authority to call another election, with the June 26 date coming just days after the British vote on the EU referendum, and just two days before EU leaders gather in Brussels on June 28 for a summit.

According to a recent opinion poll, caretaker and former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who heads up the People’s Party (PP), has seen his popularity rise ever-so-slightly since December, reaching 29% of support, up from 28% last year.

However, the PP’s biggest rivals, the Socialists, have seen their support slip from 22% in December to 20.3% currently, while anti-austerity left-wing party Podemos has experienced a similar slide, with support falling from 20.7% to 18.1%.

Only Ciudadanos, which is more of a centrist party, has enjoyed anything approaching an encouraging surge in approval ratings, growing from 13.9% support in December to 17% support today.

These trends seem to show that Spaniards are content with the way the economy has been performing in 2016 and, as a result, are perhaps losing the appetite for wholesale change that has been the promise and calling card of Podemos and, to a lesser extent, the Socialists.

So far this year, Spain’s economic growth has outperformed nearly all other countries in the eurozone. This has helped Rajoy to remind the electorate of the “hard work” his party put in during the last term, during which time the country experienced a painful double-dip recession.

Speaking to La Razón newspaper, Rajoy said that the PP was “the most useful for Spain”, with the new elections “a lesser evil” than electing a government that would seek to unravel many of the hard labour reforms introduced by the PP over the past couple of years.