Parliamentary support for Rajoy

On Tuesday Mariano Rajoy was chosen as prime minister with the votes of his party, the Popular Party (PP), supported only by the deputies of UPN and Foro Asturias, for a total of 187. Against him voted, apart from the Socialists, IU and UPyD, all the regional nationalist parties except the Basque Nationalist PNV, abertzale grouping Amaiur and Coalición Canaria, both of which abstained.

The most striking rejection was that of CiU (16 seats in Congress), a party which has working agreements with the PP in dozens of municipalities. In Barcelona, CiU's abstention allowed the passage of the regional budget for 2011 while its support for that of 2012, which was presented on Tuesday, is still being negotiated. The harmony between Josep Antoni Duran Lleida and Rajoy regarding economic measures pointed at least to a CiU abstention; however, Rajoy's unreceptiveness to CiU's principal demands in financing (a fiscal pact, and payment of pending quantities to the region) inclined their vote to a no.

This may be a sign of the difference between having a clear majority or not. Rajoy desires, and perhaps politically needs, to legitimize his adjustment measures with the backing of other parties. CiU was the most obvious candidate to do him this service; but Rajoy is not afraid of losing the vote, and is also aware of how Spanish public opinion has frowned on the deals made with regional nationalists in the last legislature. But one symptom of the political crisis is the differing perceptions of certain questions in Catalonia (and in the Basque Country) and across Spain as a whole.

The PNV spokesman invoked this different vision as he called on the PP to play a role in the process of putting an end to terrorism, the ashes of which still smolder, he said, in the form of intimidation in small towns. Erkoreka obtained Rajoy's promise to consider the PNV a permanent interlocutor on this matter: something that Amaiur did not achieve despite its abstention (which one of its deputies explained as disinterest in the national government.)

Its spokesman, Iñaki Antigüedad, spoke of the "political conflict" without mention of ETA, and Rajoy responded by mentioning ETA's murders on the eve of the previous elections; and upon Rajoy's assertion that any idea is defensible if this is done by democratic means, the spokesman noted that the PP had excluded Amaiur from its pre-investiture contacts for "defending unconstitutional projects." This exchange was in a serious but not strident tone. Antigüedad later said that his formation proposes a change in the Basque political framework only if there is a clear majority in favor, which excludes its imposition. But when asked about the dissolution of ETA, he did not answer.

One conclusion drawn from Tuesday's debate was that the more numerous representation of regional nationalist (and other splinter) parties does not increase their political influence in situations when the governing party has a clear majority. Experience also shows that such a majority may also be a cocoon that prevents perception of what is going on outside the parliament.