Laurence Dollimore
SPAIN is facing the possibility of a snap general election this year as the ruling Partido Popular become increasingly engulfed in scandal.
It comes a day after the PP’s former treasurer Luis Barcenas was convicted in the Gurtel Case, the country’s biggest ever corruption probe.
Rajoy has now been told by the opposition that it would be tabling a no-confidence motion in the prime minister.
Ciudadanos, the centre-left ally that the conservative PP need to govern, has said Rajoy must call a snap election or it too will file a motion of no confidence.
It comes after a string of former PP leaders were convicted yesterday for a combined 351 years in prison for crimes including falsifying accounts, influence-peddling and tax crimes.
Rajoy has always denied wrongdoing but the Gurtel case has plagued the PM since he came to power in 2011.
PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez said the no confidence vote was needed ‘to recover the dignity of our democracy, today under question because of the party that rules our country’.
Sanchez, who would automatically replace Rajoy if the PM lost the vote, said his first order of business would be to call for an election.
Spain’s previous general election resulted in a hung parliament and saw the country effectively ungoverned throughout much of 2016.
Ciudadanos’s secretary general José Manuel Villegas said the ‘PP corruption had liquidated the legislature’.
“Mr Rajoy cannot hide”, Villegas added.
Rajoy has said he would not call a snap election.
He added that he planned to serve out his four-year term ‘as long as it remains in my power’.
“The no-confidence motion goes against the political stability that our country needs and it goes against the economic recovery. It is bad for Spain,” he said.
