Issue 196 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 1996 Copyright © Socialist Review

Felipe Gonzalez's defeat in the Spanish general election last month has put an end to 14 years of Socialist Party government. But the far right wing Popular Party (PP), heirs of Franco's dictatorship, did not achieve the massive majority predicted. In fact the PSOE vote held up. Now the PP must rely on the Catalan nationalists (CiU), a bourgeois nationalist party, and the right wing Basque nationalist party, the PNV, if it wants to form a government. The PP will have to swallow more than humble pie if it is to get support from the CiU and PNV. Its campaign in recent municipal elections was based on appeals to centralism and anti- Catalan and Basque propaganda.

One of the reasons for the narrow victory of the PP was that many people still remember Franco and voted for the PSOE from fear of the return of the old right. The PSOE won in its traditional southern stronghold of Andalucia in both the general and regional elections. This was a punishment vote against the United Left (IU) for allegedly making a pact with the PP after the municipal and regional elections in both Andalucia and the Asturias region against the Socialists. Generally, however, the IU's vote held.

The IU has formed a vocal and high profile opposition through the years of Socialist government. It was formed from the reorganisation, in 1985, of the old Spanish Communist Party and has stood for full employment, defence of the welfare state and the nationalised industries.

While the PSOE's aim was to modernise the economy, making it competitive in the international markets in the interests of Spanish capitalism, IU held to the traditional line of Keynesian style state intervention promoting investment where necessary to create jobs and stimulate growth. The rhetoric of the United Left was not dissimilar from that of Tony Benn in the Labour Party.

The Spanish working class has staged four general strikes in the last 11 years. There have also been a multitude of smaller strikes involving factory occupations, no-go areas for security forces, pitched battles with the police and solid support from local communities. However, these struggles are not built on or generalised. The key weakness of IU, which declares its support for these struggles, is that it has no strategy for winning them. Its main activity is taking part in elections.

Yet even in electoral terms the party has not done itself any favours. The Spanish working class identified the traditional right (PP) as its class enemy and voted overwhelmingly for the most obvious party which could prevent the heirs of Franco from coming to power. Most commentators expected the PSOE vote to collapse under the weight of scandals and corruption, letting the right in, but with a bigger left vote. The United Left expected its vote to double to 20 percent. It didn't happen. Clearly, many people voted tactically for the PSOE. Had IU taken advantage of the discontent with the Socialists, the situation could have been different.

In the short term it is not clear what will happen. An outright clear victory of the right hasn't happened as predicted. They haven't been able to break through because of the national question and the popular support given to the CiU and PNV. The hard right seems to have reached its limit for the time being in terms of votes, capturing a record 40 percent. But if we look at voting patterns over the last 19 years very little has changed: people still remain loyal to their roots.

The future prospects for the government as PP leaders try to cobble up a deal with the nationalist leaders are unclear. The PP sold itself from an anti-corruption democratic position, claiming that it was a centre party. Felipe Gonzalez, in one of his more lucid moments, asked what was to the right of the PP and gave a clear answer--nothing. In addition, the PSOE in opposition will be a very different animal from when it was in government. As the elections have shown, the strength of social democratic ideas combined with the deeply ingrained historic memory of Franco can only aid the PSOE in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, the leadership of the trade union movement has been moving to the right. Left wing leaders were defeated at the recent congress of the CCOO (Workers' Commissions) and both CCOO and UGT (the other main union) leaders seem keen to orientate towards the PSOE in opposition rather than the IU.

But there is resistance on the ground. Members of the critical section of the CCOO recently occupied the federation's headquarters, and they won the support of 35 percent of the delegates at the Commission's conference. And when all is said and done, 2.6 million workers voted for the United Left in the general election. In a country with a working population of 15 million that is a significant minority fed up with the PSOE's politics of betrayal. The job of revolutionaries in Spain is to build a real alternative to reformism amongst these people.