Spanish elections and politics

[Velasco]

 

Has anybody used the classic "Oh, I'm really good at winning the lottery" line yet?

Yes, a certain Carlos Fabra became renowned for that. Fabra was Presidente de la Diputación de Castellón (Chief of the provincial government of Castellón) and a leading figure of PP in the Valencia region.

Also, lmao at that seating allocation. I'm guessing that was the suggestion that came after seating all the Podemos MP's in the corridor.

Apparently the proposal came from PSOE. Someone must hate purple boys so much in the Socialist Party, formerly known as the 'Common House of the Left'

[Nanwe]

The King has not offered Rajoy the possibility of forming a government. In the meantime, Rajoy will refuse to talk to PSOE unless PSOE agrees to support him first. Sánchez is now ready to try and go through the investiture session if the King asks him to and Rajoy continues to refuse.

Meanwhile, within the PP many people want a proper renovation, if not outright rebranding à la AP-PP, of the party in a post-Rajoy time. Ending the digital selection system of candidates might help. Also developing actual anti-corruption policies beyond saying that politicians should give example.

The King is to meet with Patxi López, the President of the Congress of Deputies at 19:30 (so in 14 minutes) to announce him the name of his candidate to the investiture. We shall see if this time the King does put forward someone's name. I suspect it'll be Sánchez though. It seems like things are getting easier for him, even though Podemos yesterday made a ridiculous proposal in which it already picked the ministers and the portfolios for PSOE ministers!

[Nanwe]

And indeed the King has tasked Sánchez with the role of formateur. Since there's no time limit in the law between the proposal and the first vote on the investiture, and this is decided by the President of the Congress (Patxi López, PSOE), Sánchez will have some advantage on his side.

In any case, López has already told the press that Sánchez has told him that he'll require 3-4 weeks to negotiate (they could have started in January!) an agreement. That would place the first investiture vote on February 25th or March 1st. And the second one within less than a week from them, iirc.

[Nanwe]

Albert Rivera (C's) besides other conditions, has said their support for a Government (beyond Transition 2.0, progressive welfare state, liberal economy) is dependent on a policy of further European integration or even the United States of Europe. Man, sometimes it's incredible how different political cultures are across Europe. In Spain, a politician speaks of USE and it's awesome and being  Eurosceptic is the political equivalent of being a Maoist.

I love Spain for these lil' quirks.

[aross]

Ending the digital selection system of candidates might help.

What's problematic about it? Seems like it would make it harder for corrupt cliques to stitch things up. (If I understand you correctly - you mean party members choosing candidates in an online vote, right?)

[Nanwe]

Ending the digital selection system of candidates might help.

What's problematic about it? Seems like it would make it harder for corrupt cliques to stitch things up. (If I understand you correctly - you mean party members choosing candidates in an online vote, right?)

No sorry, I was being cheeky. Digital in this sense means the old-fashioned meaning of digital, from Latin 'digitus', finger. Appointment through finger-pointing by your predecessor.

[aross]

Ending the digital selection system of candidates might help.

What's problematic about it? Seems like it would make it harder for corrupt cliques to stitch things up. (If I understand you correctly - you mean party members choosing candidates in an online vote, right?)

No sorry, I was being cheeky. Digital in this sense means the old-fashioned meaning of digital, from Latin 'digitus', finger. Appointment through finger-pointing by your predecessor.

Thanks, that makes sense! I have actually heard of the expression, it just didn't translate well.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is starting to look a lot like Italy 2013...

[Velasco]

Results of the 2015 General Election in the municipality of Madrid.  



Overall results:

PP                 35.72 %  (-15.79%)
PODEMOS     20.82 %     (new)
C's                17.42 %     (new)
PSOE            16.98 %    (-8.74%)
IU-UP              5.33 %   (-2.56%)
UPYD               1.27 %   (-8.49%)
VOX                 0.74%     (new)
PACMA             0.67%   (+0.32%)

Best and worst districts by party:

PP
Best: Salamanca (51.95%), Chamartín (51.63%), Chamberí (46.92%), Moncloa-Aravaca (45.31%)
Worst: Puente de Vallecas (20.75%), Villa de Vallecas (21.98%), Vicálvaro (24.10%), Villaverde (25.14%)

Podemos
Best: Centro (32.84%), Puente de Vallecas (32.35%), Villa de Vallecas (29.81%), Usera (26.27%)
Worst: Chamartín (11.12%), Salamanca (11.71%), Chamberí (14.75%), Moncloa-Aravaca (15.56%)

Ciudadanos
Best: Barajas (23.02%), Hortaleza (21.37%), Fuencarral-El Pardo (20.86%), Chamartín (20.59%)
Worst: Puente de Vallecas (11.07%), Usera (13.59%), Villaverde (13.86%), Centro (14.19%)

PSOE
Best: Puente de Vallecas (25.86%), Villaverde (25.63%), Usera (24.76%), Vicálvaro (21.49%)
Worst: Chamartín (9.53%), Salamanca (10.00%), Chamberí (10.94%), Retiro (11.95%)

IU-UP
Best: Centro (7.99%), Arganzuela (6.82%), Puente de Vallecas (6.71%), Vicálvaro (6.62%)
Worst: Salamanca (3.30%), Chamartín (3.44%), Fuencarral-El Pardo (4.32%), Chamberí (4.37%)

[Nanwe]

Interesting. You can clearly see the north-south divide in Europe's most unequal capital. Well, with the exception of Centro, which I support shows a much more gentrified, pijoprogre kind of left, as opposed to the working-class areas in the south.

I don't see a clear pattern for C's, they are stronger in the wealthier north (to be expected) but for instance their best result is in Barajas, which is not precisely Madrid's wealthiest district. Also, I wonder if the voters from Salamanca would ever stop voting PP, maybe if Rajoy is caught ritually sacrificing Aguirre to the Gods of electoral repetition?

The divide is crazy though, I was working out the results for the 2008 elections in my electoral model, and the Madrid Sur district (Arganzuela, Latina, Carabanchel, Usera, Puente-Vallecas, Moratalaz, Villaverde, Villa-Vallecas, San Blas and Barajas) was strongly left-wing (in one of them PCPE or POSI came third lol) whereas the PP has their best results in Madrid Norte. Even better than in Murcia.

By the way, Velasco, could I use the colour key? I wanted to use it for the maps, since it's quite nice.

[Nanwe]

January CIS poll and difference December 2015 election. Polling held between 6 and 11 of January.

PP: 28,8% (-0.1), Podemos: 21,9% (+1.4), PSOE: 20,5% (-1.5), C's: 13,3% (-0.4), IU: 3,7% (=)

[Velasco]

Interesting. You can clearly see the north-south divide in Europe's most unequal capital. Well, with the exception of Centro, which I support shows a much more gentrified, pijoprogre kind of left, as opposed to the working-class areas in the south.

Well, the most populous neighbourhood in the the district of Centro is Lavapiés. That place is consistently left-wing. As well Podemos was officially launched there, at Teatro del Barrio. It's not exactly a wealthy neighbourhood, but it's somewhat gentrified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavapi%C3%A9s

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I don't see a clear pattern for C's, they are stronger in the wealthier north (to be expected) but for instance their best result is in Barajas, which is not precisely Madrid's wealthiest district. Also, I wonder if the voters from Salamanca would ever stop voting PP, maybe if Rajoy is caught ritually sacrificing Aguirre to the Gods of electoral repetition?

As you say, C's is stronger in the north. UPyD used to perform strongly in Barajas, Hortaleza or Fuencarral-El Pardo (surprisingly in Vicálvaro, too). In wealthy conservative districts such as Chamartín, Salamanca, etcetera, it came in second place. The worst districts for C's are old working class neighbourhoods (Puente de Vallecas, Usera, Villaverde) and Centro. However, you can see that C's did better in the SE periphery (San Blas, Vicálvaro, Villa de Vallecas). Maybe the reason (I'm speculating) is that said districts have a lower average age. 'New' parties perform better among young voters.

For instance, Rivas-Vaciamadrid is located SE of Madrid, contiguous to the Vicálvaro district. It's the fastest-growing municipality in Spain and attracts young residents from the capital. There, Podemos came first but C's performed strongly too. Through the link you can see results by census section:

http://elecciones.rivasciudad.es/2015/generales/index.php

Related to this, Spain is losing population since 2012 due to the economic crisis. In metropolitan areas the trend is that population is diminishing in the core, but suburban municipalities are still growing (San Sebastián de los Reyes, Las Rozas, Pozuelo, Getafe or the aforementioned Rivas in the Madrid region). There is a map through the link:

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/29/media/1454085215_892068.html

By the way, Velasco, could I use the colour key? I wanted to use it for the maps, since it's quite nice.

Of course. You can download Inkscape too: it's free

 

[Nanwe]

Interesting. You can clearly see the north-south divide in Europe's most unequal capital. Well, with the exception of Centro, which I support shows a much more gentrified, pijoprogre kind of left, as opposed to the working-class areas in the south.

Well, the most populous neighbourhood in the the district of Centro is Lavapiés. That place is consistently left-wing. As well Podemos was officially launched there, at Teatro del Barrio. It's not exactly a wealthy neighbourhood, but it's somewhat gentrified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavapi%C3%A9s

Oh, my bad. I honestly thought Centro would be more dimigraphically similar to Salamanca, but well I do know about Lavapies' reputation, just didn't figure out it's within Centro.

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Yeah, I remember, it's also a very left-wing municipality in any case. Although it would be interesting to look at how it voted in the late 1990s when the PP was more popular among the youth than the PSOE. I still wonder whether Vaciamadrid stands for Va hacia Madrid (go to Madrid) or Vacía Madrid (Madrid emptier)

EDIT:

In 1993, PSOE received 40.32% votes (and PP was third after IU!), in 1996, PSOE 36.45 (and PP 32.07) and even in 2000 PSOE still came ahead of the PP: 39.03 vs. 36.82.

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True, but the suburbanisation is a demographic trends since the 1990s, isn't it? Also, a word for non-Spaniards, suburbs in Spain are also flat-dominated, they are more "ciudades dormitorio" (sleeping-only cities?) than American-style (or even European style) detached house suburbs. For some reason, Spaniards love to live in flats.

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That I have, no worries. So do you have like a scale from 0 to 100? Because I've noticed in your maps on St. Brendan's Island blog that starting and finishing colouring varies.

[Velasco]

That I have, no worries. So do you have like a scale from 0 to 100? Because I've noticed in your maps on St. Brendan's Island blog that starting and finishing colouring varies.

Yes, it's something like that. I'll send you RGB codes via PM when I can.

[Velasco]

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True, but the suburbanisation is a demographic trends since the 1990s, isn't it? Also, a word for non-Spaniards, suburbs in Spain are also flat-dominated, they are more "ciudades dormitorio" (sleeping-only cities?) than American-style (or even European style) detached house suburbs. For some reason, Spaniards love to live in flats.

Yes, that trend started before. The article I linked before says that suburban municipalities are still growing. The translation for "ciudades dormitorio" is "dormitory towns" and yes, in many of those suburbs flats and apartments are the prevailing typology (especially in working class suburban municipalities like Getafe, Móstoles, Alcorcón and such). However, attached villas ("chalets adosados") have spread in many areas (see Rivas) and obviously in wealthier municipalities independent villas and mansions are more widespread. To take an example in Alcobendas municipality, there are big differences between La Moraleja (a luxury development where Cristiano Ronaldo lives) and the town centre. 

[Velasco]

PSOE and Podemos don't love one another:

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/02/05/inenglish/1454686165_156868.html

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PSOE and C's agreed to start negotiating a government program in a meeting between Pedro Sánchez and Albert Rivera on Thursday. C's leader persisted in his role of facilitator ("if the PP and PSOE do not drop this cold war, there will be no agreement”). Nobody in PSOE -including Susana Díaz and the 'barons'- wants to deal with PP, because that would be granting conservatives pardon in the midst of a new chapter of their never-ending corruption saga. On the other hand, it's becoming apparent that Sánchez has a better tune with Rivera. Also, the moderate profile of PSOE's negotiating team points to a deal with oranges. The problem is that numbers don't add up, unless PP or Podemos abstain in the investiture. Both parties made clear that they will vote against Sánchez in the eventuality of a PSOE-C's agreement.

[Velasco]

General Election results in Barcelona municipality by district



Full results:

http://resultadosgenerales2015.interior.es/congreso/#/ES201512-CON-ES/ES/CA09/08/08019

Vote distribution by census section:

http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/politica/resultados-elecciones-generales-2015-barcelona-calle-barrio-4774203

[Nanwe]

Iglesias is being ridiculous by insisting that Sanchez should only negotiate with him and Garzon. The numbers don't add up without Cs or the nationalists, and Cs seems a more likely candidate. It's obvious Iglesias is already ogling the new elections.

Btw, Valencia should be extremely interesting, Es El Moment obtained 45% votes iirc.

[Velasco]

PSOE released a document yesterday

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/02/08/inenglish/1454943596_857958.html

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Finally the Board of the Congress agreed to rectify the seating location of Podemos MPs. This is the final allocation:



In other news, the Noós corruption trial restarts. King Felipe's sister Cristina de Borbón will be the last to take the stand. Main defendants are her husband Iñaki Urdangarín, former regional politicians from Valencia, Balearic Islands and Madrid and several businessmen.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/02/09/inenglish/1455005745_805985.html

PP withdrew former Mayoress of Valencia Rita Barberá from the chairmanship of the Senate's Constitutional Commission, but placed her in the Standing Committee. In case elections have to be repeated, Barberá will retain her position as member of the Upper House. Given that legislators and other elected officials enjoy a special jurisdiction in Spain, that appointment seeks to protect her from the implications of the new corruption scandal involving 9 out of 10 current councilors of the Popular Party in the city of Valencia.. In any case, the woman who was once a "PP icon" and the "Mayoress of Spain" has fallen from grace in her own party. 

[Velasco]

Esperanza Aguirre resigns as regional leader of PP in Madrid, leaving Mariano Rajoy in bad place. "Corruption is killing us. I assume the political responsibility". Three days ago, the Guardia Civil (Spanish military police) registered Madrid PP HQs in search for illegal party funding evidence.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Y'know I joked about PP being a criminal enterprise masquerading as a party? I'm starting to think that wasn't hyberbole, lol.

Meanwhile in Madrid, two puppeters have been arrested for making some deranged satire involving murder, rape and the ETA, after their show was accidentally marketed to kiddies

[Antonio the Sixth]

Y'know I joked about PP being a criminal enterprise masquerading as a party? I'm starting to think that wasn't hyberbole, lol.

Meanwhile in Madrid, two puppeters have been arrested for making some deranged satire involving murder, rape and the ETA, after their show was accidentally marketed to kiddies

WHAT

[Nanwe]

Esperanza Aguirre resigns as regional leader of PP in Madrid, leaving Mariano Rajoy in bad place. "Corruption is killing us. I assume the political responsibility". Three days ago, the Guardia Civil (Spanish military police) registered Madrid PP HQs in search for illegal party funding evidence.

Surprising. Cifuentes must be so happy.

[Velasco]

Y'know I joked about PP being a criminal enterprise masquerading as a party? I'm starting to think that wasn't hyberbole, lol.

Meanwhile in Madrid, two puppeters have been arrested for making some deranged satire involving murder, rape and the ETA, after their show was accidentally marketed to kiddies

Puppeteers were released a couple of days ago. They were arrested on baseless arguments. In my opinion, the arrest was politically motivated.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/02/10/inenglish/1455119040_652426.html

The whole incident is shameful. It's the consequence of restrictive security laws (the infamous 'gag law', the anti-terrorist law), a taboo on ETA terrorism, political correctness... and obviously it has been used by conservative media in Madrid as a weapon against the local government (Ahora Madrid, a platform that includes Podemos). A more or less irrelevant error in the program of events (the show was a bit strong for children, and that is all) becoming in an artificially inflated political scandal. All the Spanish Right screaming blue murder and blah, blah, blah.

Esperanza Aguirre resigns as regional leader of PP in Madrid, leaving Mariano Rajoy in bad place. "Corruption is killing us. I assume the political responsibility". Three days ago, the Guardia Civil (Spanish military police) registered Madrid PP HQs in search for illegal party funding evidence.

Surprising. Cifuentes must be so happy.

It's a resignation with a trick. Aguirre will continue as Madrid councilor, leading the opposition against Manuela Carmena. I'm afraid that she's not going to quit definitely.

[Nanwe]

Velasco, you must realise that to this day that ETA and their victims is very much a sensitive topic for the right-wing electorate. It's their version of political correctness (the left has their own, but we never talk of the ones the right has), but the play was certainly of bad taste, but not to keep two nobodies in prison for 5 days without bail over a play.

But the PP does what it does best, politicise ETA, even after it's basically dead. I wonder what they'll do once that boogeyman is gone. Venezuela is not so psychologically strong.

Anyhow, poll of polls (12/02):

PP: 28.2 (-0.5), PSOE: 21.6 (-0.4), Podemos: 20.9 (+0.3), C's: 15.9 (+2), IU: 3.9 (+0.2)

Although this fails to take into account the recent string of PP corruption scandals in Madrid, Valencia and Murcia (minor, but right on time for Rajoy's visit to Murcia).