Centrum Stosunków Międzynarodowych - 27 June 2016: People’s Party wins elections in Spain

The People’s Party (PP) has become the winner of Sunday's repeated elections in Spain. The election result was broadly the same as that of those in December last year. Unexpectedly, the PP and the Socialists (PSOE) performed better than expected. The PP won 137 seats, short of the 176 needed for an outright majority. The Socialist Party became second while Unidos Podemos (United We Can) - which brings together Podemos, the communist United Left (IU) and the greens, came in third. Citizens (CiU) became fourth again. It remains to be seen whether coalition talks will succeed, as they failed after last year's elections, which brought about similar results.

A government led by Mariano Rajoy, leader of the PP still needs support from other parties to get a coalition. Spain's Socialists said on Monday they would not back a government led by Mariano Rajoy.