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What’s it all about? Gold deposits buried in Spain
Pedro Sanchez, president of the Spanish government, decided to cut his losses by announcing a snap poll after the PSOE’s disastrous results in the May 28 municipal and regional elections.
As well as Sanchez’s face, the posters and billboards on Spain’s streets and squares also show Alberto Nuñez Feijoo (PP), Santiago Abascal (Vox) and Yolanda Diaz (Sumar). The PP is conservative and Vox is further to its right. The PSOE are socialists while Sumar, a 17party coalition, is further to its left.
Neither the PP nor the PSOE is likely to obtain an overall majority of at least 176 MPs, so Feijoo must turn to Vox, whose parliamentary seats would allow him to form a government. The PSOE and Sumar will form a similar alliance.
Although there are other parties, mainly nationalist, the next government will inevitably be a PPVox or PSOESumar tandem.
The PP promises a tax reform, will eradicate sexist violence and improve the education system. It is determined to eliminate Sanchismo, Feijoo’s term for Sanchez’s policies, laws and actions which the PP considers “erroneous and anticonstitutional.”
Vox wants a “fiscal revolution” and will re peal the abortion and euthanasia laws. Abascal would centralise a future government with far less power for the autonomous regions, while making it harder for immigrants to acquire Spanish nationality. The PSOE intends to “consolidate the welfare state”, shorten hospital and specialist waiting lists, provide free transport for the under24s and free further education for students who consistently pass their exams. Sumar will build two million homes with affordable rents, pay a children’s allowance of €200 per child up to the age of 18, introduce higher taxes for the rich and help with mortgages for the less welloff. Following outraged reactions, sanctions for purveyors of fake news were dropped as soon as they were announced.
The winner or winners will then have a fouryear parliamentary term to fulfil their election pledges and promises.
