We can learn a lot from the sudden end to the two-party system in Spain

What happens when the apparent long-standing solidity of a two-party system suddenly collapses? A look at Spain, with its latest round of elections called for June 23, gives us some idea.

In Spain, the fragmentation of the two-party system is seeing rising parties on both the right and the left. Polling suggests Spain could be following Italy’s lead in inviting its post-fascist party into the centre of the national government.

In 2008, Spain’s political landscape looked, with a bit of a squint, enough like Australia’s to be recognisable. It had two large, apparently stable, parties: the socialist PSOE on the centre-left and the People’s Party on the centre-right. Both, when elected, governed within the relatively narrow constraints of that peculiar European blend of neo-liberalism and the social-democratic welfare state.

In the 2008 vote, before the financial crisis, these two traditional parties shared about 83% of the vote, just as they had for most of the previous 30 years. (The leftover votes generally went to regional parties broadly aligned with one side or the other.)

Just two elections later, in 2015, that long-stable duopoly slumped to just half the vote with the other half spattered across new and emerging voices. The cause? A public revolt against the traditional parties’ mutual embrace of austerity mandated by the Euro crisis.

It’s a fall far faster than here in Australia, where the vote of the two major parties has teetered from a similar 85.5% share in the pre-GFC 2007 election to 68% in last year’s vote, still high enough for our preferential voting model to deliver majority government — for the time being at least. 

Spain’s multi-party moment came in two steps. The 2015 collapse was triggered by two parties that emerged from the street protests against the cuts to wages and workers’ rights, and the slicing of social security and other public goods to keep Spain in the Euro.

The left-leaning Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos took a third of the vote in 2015, throwing the system into turmoil. Over the course of three more elections (one the following year and two more in 2019), an attempted bolt for independence by Catalonia and 2018’s first successful parliamentary no-confidence vote in modern Spain, the political ecosystem reset. The traditional parties moved away from the centre to part-compete, part-cooperate with new frenemies on their flanks.

The result? Long-avoided coalition and minority governments look set to be the norm after the current Socialist-led government became the first coalition of national parties since the 1930s civil war. It’s been significantly more progressive than its more cautious majority-ruling predecessors.

On the right, the new kid on the block is the post-Franco-ist Vox Party which surged to about 15% of the vote in the 2019 election, powered by its rigid opposition to any regional autonomy in Catalonia or the Basque country.

On the left, Podemos evolved from its protest roots as it coalesced with other groupings to rebrand as Unidas Podemos with about 14% of the vote in 2019. Now, it’s being challenged to link with a new left grouping, Sumar (roughly, “together”), launched in April by popular second deputy prime minister and labour minister Yolanda Díaz who implemented the country’s COVID-19 support. Polls show Sumar and Podemos share the left’s 15% vote.

The shake-up has changed the landscape from a safe competition between two parties falling just either side of the centre into a more contentious battle between loose coalitions on the left and right. 

The country has had three years to get used to a left coalition government between the Socialists and Podemos. In the wake of the conservative win in last weekend’s local elections as the right re-absorbed the once-protesting Ciudadanos vote, Spain will see how the conservatives and Vox share power in cities and regions.

The big question is whether the country is ready for a national government shaped by the nationalist-populist views of a party like Vox. Across Europe, the traditional centre-right parties have spent the past decade grappling with whether they should link with the emerging post-fascist voices. Different countries have come up with different answers. Italy, Austria: Yes, please! Sweden, Finland: No… wait, yes. France, Germany: No way… so far.

The price of coalition has proved high: the certainty of the far right often ends up dominating the moderation of their partners, as occurred in last year’s Italian elections. Polling indicates a similar pattern in Austria. 

Behind in the polls, current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is betting that Spain will vote to lock out Vox’s Franco-nostalgic, anti-migrant, Euro-critical, climate-sceptic ideology. He’s hoping too that hurrying on the vote (it wasn’t due until December) will compel Podemos and Sumar to come together — or encourage its voters to play safe and vote strategically for the Socialists.