Spanish Elections 2023: PCTE communists emerge strengthened under negative political conditions

The results of July 23rd elections in Spain did not pronounce a clear victory for the ruling social democratic PSOE or the opposition right parties, with no side gaining the parliamentary majority needed to form a government. The turnout in the elections to determine the 350-seat parliament was 70%, with 37.5 registered million voters.

The right-wing People's Party (PP) won the elections with 136 seats, increasing the number by 47 compared to December 2019 elections. The social democratic Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), headed by PM Pedro Sanchez, won 122 seats.

 

On the other hand, the far-right, ultra-nationalist VOX Party, suffered significant loss, falling from 52 to 33 seats, while the minor social democratic alliance of SUMAR won 31 deputies.

PCTE strengthened

Despite the difficult political conditions, the negative correlation of forces and the absence of any media coverage, the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) increased its electoral impact: 17,918 votes for Congress, increased by 37.52% in relation to 2019 elections and 63,513 votes for the Senate, up by 0.37%. 

It is reminded the PCTE increased its electoral power in last May's regional and municipal elections

In a statement about the results, the Political Bureau of the PCTE underlines that “ the election between the PSOE and its crutch SUMAR or the PP and its crutch VOX only meant the election between different forms of managing Spanish capitalism, the interests of Spanish capitalists, whose main representatives have witnessed how their profits grew during this last term while life and labor conditions of the working-class majority have been worsened in an evident way..”

The statement by the PCTE also stresses out: “

In spite of the PP victory, it does not have an absolute majority along with VOX. A stage that could lead to the repetition of elections in a few months will be opened unless the Basque and Catalan independentist forces support the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in a new social democratic coalition with SUMAR. In the case of reedit the social democratic coalition, the attacks against the working-class majority in the next term will follow the path opened after the outbreak of the crisis catalyzed by the pandemic. Measures that are meant to ensure a flexibility that will favor the employers at companies and the maintenance of company profits via a massive transfer of labor income to capital income —as subsidies, bonds, and direct or indirect assistances— will be presented as new workers' and people's rights. In the case of electoral repetition, the working-class majority will be subdued to a brutal campaign to reinforce the main parties of each capitalist bloc”.

As for its own results, the Communist Party of the Workers' of Spain underlines: "Our results —still modest but having a tendency to growth even though we did not present candidacies in one third of constituencies— point that we should keep on advancing in the development of a true class-oriented opposition to the capitalist consensus. Such opposition will be only possible through the general organizational strengthening of the working-class majority, through the recovery of its classical tools for struggle, and through a clear guidance to the rupture with capitalism and all those who advocate it as well as the reactionary stances pretending to introduce themselves within the workers' and people's movement.”.

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM ©