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      British Conservatives’ Commitment to Green Policy Is Tested

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      British conservatives kept a seat in a recent election by opposing an ultralow emissions zone, and some are now questioning ambitious emissions-reduction targets.Britain, blanketed by cool, damp weather, has seemed like one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere not sweltering this summer. Yet a fierce political debate over how to curb climate change has suddenly erupted, fueled by economic hardship and a recent election surprise.The surprise came last week in a London suburb, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the Conservative Party held on to a vulnerable seat in Parliament in a by-election after a voter backlash against the expansion of a low-emission zone, which will penalize people who drive older, more polluting cars.The Conservatives successfully used the emission zone plan as a wedge issue to prevail in a district they were forecast to lose. It didn’t go unnoticed in the halls of Parliament, where even though lawmakers are in recess, they have managed to agitate over environmental policy for four days running.Britain’s Conservative government is now calling into question its commitment to an array of ambitious emissions-reduction targets. Tory critics say these goals would impose an unfair burden on Britons who are suffering because of a cost-of-living crisis. Uxbridge, they argued, shows there is a political price for forging ahead.With a general election looming next year, the Tories also see an opportunity to wield climate policy as a club against the opposition Labour Party, which once planned to pour 28 billion pounds, or about $36 billion, a year into green jobs and industries but scaled back its own ambitions amid the economic squeeze.On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would approach environmental policies in a “proportionate and pragmatic a way that doesn’t unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives.”It was a strikingly circumspect statement given Britain’s self-proclaimed leadership in climate policy, which goes back to Margaret Thatcher and includes hosting the annual United Nations climate conference in 2021. And it clearly reflected the new political thinking in the aftermath of the Uxbridge vote.Government officials insist Mr. Sunak is not giving up on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030. Britain remains committed to a benchmark goal of being a net-zero — or carbon neutral — economy by 2050, which is enshrined in law. But on Tuesday, a senior minister, Michael Gove, said he wanted to review a project to end the installation of new gas boilers in homes.Traffic at the edge of the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone this month.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockEven before Mr. Sunak’s comments, critics contended that Britain’s historically strong record on climate policy had been waning.The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, recently said Britain “has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action.” The group cited the government’s failure to use the spike in fuel prices to reduce energy demand and bolster renewables. It also noted Britain’s consent for a new coal mine, and its support for new oil and gas production in the North Sea.Last month, Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio, blaming “apathy” over the environment for his departure, though he was also a close ally of the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. In a letter to Mr. Sunak, Mr. Goldsmith wrote, “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested.”Climate experts said Britain’s economic troubles fractured what had been a broad political consensus on the need for aggressive action. The schism isn’t just between the two main parties: Even within the Conservative and Labour parties, there are fissures between those who continue to call for far-reaching goals and those who want to scale back those ambitions.“This used to be an issue of across-party consensus; now it is not,” said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, an environmental research group. “The Tories have gone out of their way to turn it into a wedge issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”In Uxbridge, however, the strategy worked. The district, with its leafy streets and suburban homes, has one of the capital’s highest ratios of car dependency. That made plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand an ultra-low-emissions zone to encompass the district a potent issue for Conservatives, who opposed widening the zone.While the plan aims to improve London’s poor air quality, rather than reach net-zero targets, it was vulnerable to accusations that was piling on costs to consumers — in this case drivers of older, more polluting, vehicles.“It’s a really big impact at a time when people are concerned more generally about the cost of living,” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in neighboring district of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. “In the short term, a lot of people who don’t have the money to buy an electric vehicle or a compliant vehicle are caught by this.”Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThe surprise Conservative victory also sent alarm bells ringing within Labour. It caused tension between Mr. Khan, who insists the expansion will go ahead, and the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who seemed to want a delay.“We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” Mr. Starmer said after the defeat. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”Even before the by-election, Labour had backtracked on its plan to invest billions a year on green industries. It blamed rising borrowing costs, which spiked during the ill-fated premiership last year of Liz Truss. Now, instead of rolling out spending in the first year of a Labour government, the party said it would phase it in.Labour’s fear was that voters would conclude the incoming government would have to raise taxes, which would give the Tories another opening. “Economic stability, financial stability, always has to come first, and it will do with Labour,” Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, told the BBC.Such language is worlds away from a year ago, when Ed Miliband, who speaks for Labour on climate issues, told Climate Forward, a New York Times conference in London, that “the imprudent, reckless thing to do is not to make the investment.”He did, however, also argue that consumers should not carry all the burden of the transition. “The government has to collectivize some of those costs to make this transition fair,” said Mr. Miliband, a former party leader.Climate activists said Labour had made a mistake by highlighting the costs of its plan at a time of tight public finances. But given the broad public support for climate action, particularly among the young, some argue that a debate over which climate policies are the best need not end in failure for Labour.“Voters want something done,” Mr. Burke said. “They don’t want to pay the price for it but equally, they don’t want the government to say they are not doing anything about climate change.”Protesters rally against the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, this month in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockFor all the new skepticism, climate policy is also deeply embedded in the Conservative Party. Mrs. Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to talk about the threat to the planet from greenhouse gases in 1989. A former prime minister, Theresa May, passed the net-zero pledge in 2019, and Mr. Johnson, as mayor of London, conceived the low-emission zone that boomeranged against Labour in Uxbridge, which Mr. Johnson had represented in Parliament, last week.Alice Bell, the head of climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, noted that some Tory lawmakers were rebelling against Mr. Sunak because they were worried about losing their seats by appearing to be against firm action on climate change.Extreme weather, she said, would continue to drive public opinion on climate change. While Britain’s summer has been cool, thousands of Britons have been vacationing in the scorching heat of Italy and Spain, to say nothing of those evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in the face of deadly wildfires.“I’m wondering if we’re going to have some people coming back from holiday as climate activists,” Ms. Bell said. More

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      What the Joe Manchin-No Labels Fantasy Gets Wrong About America

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      For as long as Americans have had partisan political competition, they have hated partisanship itself.By his second term in office, in the mid-1790s, President George Washington faced organized political opponents in the form of Democratic-Republican societies that had spread throughout the country.“There was the Society for the Preservation of Liberty in Virginia, the Sons of St. Tammany and the Democratic Society in New York, the Constitutional Society in Boston, the Society of Political Inquiries, the German Republican Society and the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and similar groups scattered in all the states,” the historian Susan Dunn notes in “Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism.”In the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion of the early 1790s, Washington blamed these societies for “encouraging dissension and fomenting disorder,” as Dunn puts it. He accused them of spreading their “nefarious doctrines with a view to poison and discontent the minds of the people.” Washington’s farewell plea to avoid faction — “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” — was in many respects a response to the spread of partisan feeling during the last years of his administration.Speaking of which, Thomas Jefferson was an eager partisan. By 1797, he had emerged as the leader of the Democratic-Republican opposition to the Adams administration. In his own words, he hoped to “sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.” And yet he also hoped, in his inaugural address, that Americans would put aside partisanship and unite as one: “We have called by different names brethren of the same principle,” Jefferson wrote. “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”You can find this distaste for faction and longing for unity throughout American history, up to the present. Americans, including their political leadership, have a real and serious distaste for partisanship and political parties even as they are, and have been, as political and partisan a people as has ever existed.I was reminded of all this while reading a recent opinion essay by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, in which he dreamed of a world without politics or partisanship — a world of “common sense solutions” and bipartisan camaraderie.“What is clear to all those who wish to listen is that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in unity,” Manchin wrote in USA Today. “We are stronger as a nation when we embrace compromise, common sense and common ground.”Manchin was writing in part to explain why he appeared last week at a town hall in New Hampshire sponsored by No Labels, a centrist political group that has railed against partisanship and extremism as a voice of the so-called radical center since 2010. “Both parties follow the mood of the moment,” declared Michael Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, during the group’s inaugural event in December of that year. “They incite anger instead of addressing it — for their own partisan interests.”No Labels is still around, and its diagnosis of American politics still rests on the idea that the parties are too partisan — each captured by the most extreme members of its coalition. “These partisan extremes are in the business of feeding political division and dysfunction every day,” wrote Manchin, whose appearance at the town hall came amid speculation that he might make a third-party presidential run under the No Labels banner. “They attack our institutions, whether it is our Capitol, our elected leaders or our justice system, without caring about the lasting damage it does.”There is something deeply strange, if not outright bizarre, about a narrative that puts the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol in the same category of political action as Black Lives Matter protests, the liberal criticism of the Supreme Court or whatever it is that Manchin has in mind. Stranger still is that he does this while calling, with all apparent sincerity, for more dialogue: “I believe there is a better way to govern and lead this nation forward that embraces respectful discourse, debate and discussion.”We could spend the rest of our time here on the way that Manchin’s call for debate excludes tens of millions of Americans with passionate, informed but less popular views that offend the sensibilities of centrist politicians. Or we could focus on the fact that much of No Labels’ actual advocacy appears to be little more than a stalking horse for an unpopular agenda of benefit cuts and fiscal retrenchment.For now, though, I want to highlight the fact that there’s no way to realize this long-running fantasy of politics without partisanship. Organized conflict is an unavoidable part of democratically structured political life for the simple reason that politics is about governing and governing is about choices.For any given choice, there will be proponents and critics, supporters and opponents. Political participants will develop, in short order, different ideas about what is and what should be, and they will gather and work together to make their vision a reality. Soon enough, through no one’s precise design, you have political parties and partisanship. This, in essence, is what happened to the United States, which was founded in opposition to faction but developed, in less than a decade, a coherent system of organized political conflict.That’s not to say our political system is perfect. Far from it. But if there is a solution, it will involve an effort to harness and structure our partisanship and polarization through responsive institutions, not pretending it away in favor of a manufactured and exclusionary unity.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      ¿Qué significa para España la derrota electoral de la extrema derecha?

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      Una de las pocas certezas de los resultados de las elecciones fue que los españoles se están alejando de los extremos políticos.El statu quo liberal y moderado de Europa respiró con más tranquilidad el lunes luego de que Vox, un partido nacionalista de España, se tambaleara en las elecciones generales del domingo con lo que, por el momento, se contuvo el auge de los partidos de extrema derecha en el continente, que parecía que tendrían buenos resultados incluso en España, un bastión progresista.“Un alivio para Europa”, se leía en un titular de La Repubblica, el diario liberal de Italia, donde el año pasado la líder de extrema derecha Giorgia Meloni se convirtió en primera ministra. Meloni, en un mensaje en video divulgado este mes, les dijo a sus aliados de Vox que “la hora de los patriotas ha llegado”.Sin embargo, en vez de que Vox se tornara en el primer partido de extrema derecha en formar parte de un gobierno de España desde el final de la dictadura de Francisco Franco hace casi 50 años, como habían estimado muchas encuestas, se hundió. Los malos resultados del partido en las urnas también afectaron a los conservadores de centroderecha, quienes a su vez obtuvieron resultados más limitados de los que se esperaban y que dependían del apoyo de Vox para formar gobierno.Como resultado, ningún partido o coalición obtuvo de manera inmediata los escaños necesarios del Congreso para gobernar, lo que llevó a España a un embrollo político ya conocido y le dio nueva vida al presidente del gobierno, Pedro Sánchez, que hace solo unos días lucía agonizante. De pronto, Sánchez parece mejor posicionado para formar otro gobierno progresista en las próximas semanas y así evitar nuevas elecciones.“La democracia encontrará la fórmula de la gobernabilidad”, dijo el lunes a los líderes de su partido, el Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), según el diario El País.Lo que quedó claro es que los votantes españoles rechazaron al partido Vox, que perdió casi la mitad de sus escaños en el Congreso, lo que indica un anhelo evidente de alejarse de los extremos y regresar al centro político.Los políticos proeuropeos interpretaron el resultado como una señal alentadora de que las elecciones europeas del próximo año también se pueden ganar desde el centro, lo que significa un revés para las fuerzas de extrema derecha que han logrado avances en Suecia, Finlandia, Alemania, Francia e Italia, así como en Estados Unidos.La campaña de Vox repitió las opiniones nacionalistas de la extrema derecha adoptados de manera casi uniforme en otros países, con una oposición a la migración y a los derechos de la comunidad LGBTQ, la promoción de los valores cristianos tradicionales y la reafirmación del nacionalismo frente a la injerencia de la Unión Europea.Pero muchos de esos temas no lograron cautivar a los votantes españoles, o incluso los asustaron, y los resultados electorales fueron contrarios a la tendencia política de Europa.Los resultados, por el contrario, revelaron que el ascenso de Vox estuvo más relacionado con la respuesta nacionalista al impulso independentista de 2017 en Cataluña. Sánchez logró sosegar ese tema durante sus cinco años en el cargo al otorgar indultos y reducir las penas para los independentistas.Pedro Sánchez, líder del PSOE y presidente del gobierno español, en Madrid el domingoNacho Doce/ReutersEsas medidas tuvieron un costo político para él entre los españoles enfadados con los independentistas catalanes, pero conforme esa crisis comenzó a pasar a segundo plano, lo mismo le sucedió a Vox. Al final, el mensaje del partido les interesó a muchos menos electores en estos comicios que en 2019.“Cataluña ha sido uno de los principales impulsores del ascenso de Vox”, dijo Juan Rodríguez Teruel, politólogo de la Universidad de Valencia.Pero los resultados del domingo también mostraron que la cuestión catalana aún no está superada del todo. El lunes quedó claro que los partidos independentistas pequeños de esa región podrían ser la clave para permitir un nuevo gobierno de Sánchez, como lo hicieron en la votación anterior.Entre esos partidos están, de manera decisiva, los aliados independentistas de Carles Puigdemont, el expresidente regional de Cataluña que lideró el movimiento independentista fallido y todavía está prófugo, en un exilio autoimpuesto en Bélgica.“Puigdemont podrá hacer presidente a Sánchez”, se lee en parte de un titular del diario español El Mundo.El lunes comenzó de inmediato un complejo juego del gato y el ratón, porque unas autoridades españolas solicitaron una nueva orden de detención contra Puigdemont.“Un día eres decisivo para la formación de un gobierno español y al día siguiente España ordena tu arresto”, tuiteó el lunes.Gabriel Rufián, integrante del Congreso de los Diputados por Esquerra Republicana, un partido independentista catalán, dijo en una entrevista antes de las elecciones que Sánchez no tendría más remedio que dialogar con los independentistas.“Hace cuatro años, en la campaña electoral, prometió ir a buscar a Puigdemont a Waterloo y detenerle”, dijo Rufián sobre Sánchez. “No podía. Era absurdo”. Y añadió: “Meses después se sentó en la mesa de negociación con nosotros. Fue por la presión política, porque necesitaba gobernar su país”.El domingo por la noche, tras la votación, resumió su mensaje en una frase: “O Cataluña o Vox”. Pero su partido también perdió apoyo con el viraje de los electores españoles hacia el centro.Está por verse qué significará el resurgimiento del debate sobre Cataluña para España, los independentistas y Vox.Vox se fundó hace una década, cuando su líder, Santiago Abascal, se separó del Partido Popular (PP), un partido de centroderecha que por mucho tiempo ha albergado a partidarios de la monarquía, libertarios a favor del matrimonio igualitario, católicos ultraconservadores y españoles que repudian los movimientos independentistas del norte.El partido creía en una España unificada pero, en las décadas que siguieron al régimen de Franco, las expresiones a favor de esa postura —incluso ondear la bandera española—, se consideraban un tabú del nacionalismo.Sin embargo, animado por el impulso independentista en Cataluña, Vox estaba dispuesto a cruzar esa línea. Un buen número de votantes españoles apoyaron al partido.Los nacionalistas de Vox —que hicieron un llamado a que el movimiento independentista catalán fuera detenido por cualquier medio— atrajeron apoyo. Para las elecciones de 2019, se habían convertido en la tercera fuerza más grande del país.En un breve discurso el domingo por la noche tras los malos resultados de su partido, un Abascal que lucía abatido reconoció que Sánchez ahora tenía el apoyo para bloquear la formación de un nuevo gobierno, y también podría formar gobierno si se aliaba de nuevo con la extrema izquierda y los partidos independistas, o lo que describió como “el apoyo del comunismo, el separatismo de golpista y el terrorismo”.“Vamos a resistir”, insistió, y afirmó que su partido estaba preparado para ser parte de la oposición o “para una repetición electoral”.Pero los analistas creen que es probable que unas nuevas elecciones solo debiliten aún más a Vox. La influencia regresó a Cataluña, y más específicamente al partido de línea dura Junts per Catalunya, fundado por Puigdemont.“No haremos presidente a Sánchez a cambio de nada”, dijo en la sede del partido el domingo por la noche Míriam Nogueras, líder de Junts.Otros miembros de su partido, que fueron indultados por Sánchez, han sugerido que una amnistía y un referéndum de independencia puede ser el precio que exigen.Sin embargo, algunos políticos de izquierda y dirigentes locales que desconfían de Vox han expresado su preocupación por la posibilidad de que el aumento de la tensión con Cataluña sea exactamente lo que necesita la extrema derecha para resurgir.El viernes por la noche, Yolanda Díaz, líder de la plataforma de extrema izquierda Sumar que obtuvo 31 escaños, dijo en un mitin en Barcelona que quería “dialogar con Cataluña. Queremos un acuerdo. Salid a votar por el dialogo, por un acuerdo, por una Cataluña mejor”.Yolanda Díaz, líder de la plataforma de extrema izquierda Sumar, en un mitin en Barcelona el viernesMaria Contreras Coll para The New York TimesEl lunes, su partido contactó a Puigdemont y a Junts para intentar persuadirlos de respaldar al gobierno.En Barcelona, antes de las elecciones del domingo, a lo largo de una calle importante que se cubrió con banderas catalanas durante las protestas de 2017, solo había una a la vista.“La situación de España y la irrupción de la extrema derecha es una consecuencia de lo que ha pasado aquí en Cataluña”, dijo Joaquim Hernández, de 64 años.“Al no hacer el referéndum mantienes la tensión y el enfrentamiento que beneficia a los partidos independentistas y a Vox”, dijo, “porque Cataluña es desafortunadamente un argumento que utilizan los nacionalistas para ganar votos”.Rachel Chaundler More

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      What the Collapse of Spain’s Far Right Means Going Forward

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      About the only thing clear from Spain’s muddled election results was that Spaniards were turning away from the political extremes.Europe’s liberal and moderate establishment breathed easier on Monday after Spain’s nationalist Vox party faltered in Sunday’s elections, stalling for now a surge from far-right parties around the continent that seemed on the brink of washing over even the progressive bastion of Spain.“A relief for Europe,” read a front-page headline in the liberal La Repubblica in Italy, where the hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni became prime minister last year and predicted “the hour of the patriots has arrived” in a video message to her Vox allies this month.But instead of Vox becoming the first hard-right party to enter government in Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship nearly 50 years ago, as many polls had predicted, it sank. The party’s poor returns at the polls also took down the underperforming center-right conservatives who had depended on Vox’s support to form a government.As a result, no single party or coalition immediately gained enough parliamentary seats to govern, thrusting Spain into a familiar political muddle and giving new life to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who only days ago seemed moribund. Suddenly, Mr. Sánchez appeared best positioned to cobble together another progressive government in the coming weeks to avoid new elections.“This democracy will find the governability formula,” he told the leaders of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party on Monday, according to El País.What is clear for now is that Spanish voters rebuked the Vox party, which lost nearly half its seats in Parliament, signaling a clear desire to turn away from the extremes and back toward the political center.Pro-European politicians took the result as an encouraging sign that next year’s European elections would also be won in the center, dealing a setback to the far-right forces that have made gains in Sweden, Finland, Germany, France and Italy, as well as in the United States.Vox’s campaign parroted nearly uniform hard-right, nationalist views espoused in other nations, with opposition to migration and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, promotion of traditional Christian values and the assertion of nationalism over meddling from the European Union.But many of those issues failed to draw Spanish voters, or even scared them, and the country’s election results went contrary to Europe’s political winds.Instead, the results made clear that the rise of Vox had more to do with the nationalist response to a 2017 explosion of secessionist fervor in Spain’s Catalonia region. Mr. Sánchez managed to defuse that issue during his five years in office by delivering pardons and weakening penalties for the secessionists.Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist leader and prime minister, in Madrid, on Sunday.Nacho Doce/ReutersFor that he paid a political price among Spaniards angered by the Catalans, but as long as the issue seemed on the back burner, so did Vox. Ultimately, the party’s message had far fewer takers in this election than it did in 2019.“Catalonia has been one of the main drivers of the rise of Vox,” said Juan Rodríguez Teruel, a political scientist at the University of Valencia.But Sunday’s results also showed that the Catalan issue was not quite dead yet. On Monday, it became clear that the small independence parties of that region may very well hold the key to unlocking a new government for Mr. Sánchez, just as they did in the last vote.Critically, those parties include the pro-independence allies of Carles Puigdemont, the former regional president of Catalonia who led the failed secessionist movement and is still on the run, living in self-imposed exile in Belgium.“Puigdemont could make Sánchez president,” read a headline in the daily Spanish newspaper El Mundo.A complicated cat-and-mouse game was immediately underway on Monday, with Spanish prosecutors issuing a new arrest warrant for Mr. Puigdemont.“One day you are decisive in order to form a Spanish government, the next day Spain orders your arrest,” he tweeted on Monday.Gabriel Rufián, a member of Parliament with the Republican Left of Catalonia, a pro-Catalan independence party, said in a pre-election interview that Mr. Sánchez had no choice but to deal with the secessionists.“Four years ago in the electoral campaign, Sánchez promised to search for Puigdemont in Waterloo and arrest him. He could not. It was absurd,” he said. “Months later he sat down at the negotiating table with us. It was because of political pressure, because he needed to govern his country.”On Sunday night, after the vote, he boiled his message down simply to “Either Catalonia or Vox.” But his party lost support, too, in Spaniards’ turn to the center.What a revival the Catalonia issue would mean now for Spain, the secessionists and Vox remains to be seen.Vox was established a decade ago when its leader, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party, long a big center-right tent that included monarchists, libertarian supporters of same-sex marriage, ultraconservative Catholics and Spaniards who detested the independence movements of the north.The party believed in a unified Spain; however, overt expressions of that view — even waving the national flag — in the decades after the Franco regime were considered taboo signs of nationalism.But spurred by Catalonia’s push for independence, Vox was more than willing to cross that line. A surge of Spaniards followed it.The nationalists in Vox — who called for the Catalan movement to be put down by any means necessary — soaked up support. By the 2019 elections, they had grown to the third largest party in the country.In a short speech Sunday night after his party’s drubbing, a downcast Mr. Abascal acknowledged that Mr. Sánchez now had the support to block a new government, and could also be sworn in again with the support of the far-left and the separatist parties, or what he called “the support of communism, coup separatism and terrorism.”“We’re going to resist,” he insisted, saying that his party was prepared to be in the opposition or “repeat elections.”But analysts said new elections would likely only weaken Vox further. The leverage had shifted back to Catalonia, and more specifically to the more hard-line Together for Catalonia party, founded by Mr. Puigdemont.“We will not make Sánchez president in exchange for nothing,” Míriam Nogueras, a leader of the Together for Catalonia party, said at her headquarters Sunday night.Others in her party, who were pardoned by Mr. Sánchez, have suggested that further amnesties and a referendum on independence may be the price they demand.But left-wing politicians and locals wary of Vox worried that increased tension with Catalonia was exactly what the far right needed for a resurgence.“We want dialogue with Catalonia. We want an agreement. Go out and vote for dialogue, for an agreement, for a better Catalonia,” Yolanda Díaz, the leader of the hard-left Sumar party, which won 31 seats, told a rally in Barcelona on Friday night.Yolanda Díaz at a Sumar rally in Barcelona on Friday.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York TimesOn Monday, her party reached out to Mr. Puigdemont and the Together for Catalonia party to convince them to back the government.On the eve of Sunday’s election in Barcelona, along a main thoroughfare that was blanketed in Catalan flags during the 2017 protests, there was only one visible“The situation in Spain and the eruption of the extreme right is a consequence of what happened here in Catalonia,” said Joaquim Hernandez, 64.“By not having the referendum, you keep the tension and the confrontation that benefits the independence parties and Vox,” he said, “because Catalonia is unfortunately an argument that the nationalists use to win votes.”Rachel Chaundler More

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      Elecciones en España: el resultado empuja al país a la incertidumbre

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      La votación mostró que ningún partido obtuvo el apoyo necesario para gobernar, dejando al país frente a semanas de incertidumbre.España se vio sumida en la incertidumbre política el domingo después de que las elecciones nacionales no otorgaron a ningún partido el apoyo suficiente para formar un gobierno, lo que probablemente resulte en semanas de regateo o posiblemente en una nueva votación a finales de este año.Los resultados mostraron que la mayoría de los votos se dividieron entre la centroderecha y la centroizquierda. Pero ni el Partido Socialista del presidente Pedro Sánchez ni sus oponentes conservadores obtuvieron suficientes votos para gobernar solos en el Congreso de 350 escaños.Si bien los conservadores lideraron, los aliados con los que podrían haberse asociado para formar un gobierno del partido de extrema derecha Vox vieron cómo su apoyo se desmoronaba, ya que los españoles rechazaron a los partidos extremistas.El resultado fue una votación poco concluyente y un embrollo político que se ha vuelto familiar para los españoles desde que su sistema bipartidista se fracturó hace casi una década. Esto parece dejar a España en un limbo político en un momento importante cuando ostenta la presidencia rotatoria del Consejo Europeo mientras enfrenta una agresión rusa en Ucrania.Con el 99 por ciento de los resultados, el conservador Partido Popular obtenía 136 escaños en el Congreso, frente a 122 de los Socialistas. Pero habían anticipado obtener una mayoría absoluta y gobernar sin Vox, partido que que muchos de los propios responsables del partido consideran anacrónico, peligroso y execrable para los valores moderados de España.El líder del partido, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, dijo poco después de la medianoche que se sentía muy orgulloso frente a una multitud que ondeaba banderas españolas y alegó que dado que su partido había ganado la elección, tenía derecho a formar gobierno.Pero el tono de su discurso era claramente defensivo y dijo que los candidatos que habían obtenido la mayor cantidad de votos siempre había gobernado y que sería una “anomalía” si no fuera así en esta ocasión, manchando la reputación de España en el exterior. Dijo que su meta era evitar al país un periodo de “incertidumbre”.Alberto Núñez Feijóo, líder del Partido Popular, tras la votación del domingo en Madrid.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressAfuera, mientras sonaba la letra de “Tonight’s going to be a good night” (“Esta noche será una buena noche”), la atmósfera era de celebración, si bien los seguidores comprendían que no era una buena noche para el partido.Isabel Ruiz, de 24 años, comentó que había pensado que ganarían a lo grande. Llevaba una bandera española en los hombros y dijo que estaba preparada para seguir votando hasta desbancar a Sánchez.El caos político no es nuevo en España. En 2016, el país pasó 10 meses en un limbo mientras avanzaba de elección en elección. Luego, Sánchez derrocó al presidente conservador y ganó el poder con una maniobra parlamentaria en 2018. Siguieron más elecciones hasta que Sánchez finalmente armó un gobierno minoritario con la extrema izquierda y el apoyo en el Congreso de pequeños partidos independentistas.Esta vez, Sánchez, un sobreviviente político de primer orden, volvió a desafiar las expectativas, aumentando los escaños de su partido en el Congreso y ganando suficiente apoyo con sus aliados de izquierda para bloquear la formación de un gobierno conservador por ahora.El domingo, a las afueras de la sede de su partido, dijo que el pueblo español había sido claro y aseguró que la mayoría de los españoles deseaba seguir en un camino progresista.El presidente podría gobernar otro periodo si lo respaldan todos los partidos opuestos al PP y a Vox, una tarea extremadamente difícil.En las semanas previas a las elecciones, Sánchez y sus aliados de izquierda expresaron temores sobre la disposición de sus oponentes conservadores a asociarse con Vox, lo que podría convertirlo en el primer partido de extrema derecha en aliarse con el gobierno desde la dictadura del general Francisco Franco hace casi 50 años.La perspectiva de que Vox comparta el poder en el gobierno inquietaba a muchos españoles y provocó una cadena de reacciones en la Unión Europea y sus bastiones liberales restantes, sorprendiendo a muchos que habían considerado a España inoculada contra los extremos políticos desde que terminó el régimen de Franco en la década de 1970.La ascensión de Vox, argumentaban los liberales, equivaldría a un punto de inflexión preocupante para España y otra señal más del avance de la derecha en Europa. En cambio, Vox se hundió y puede haber reducido las posibilidades de que el Partido Popular gobierne con él.Un mitin de Vox en Madrid la semana pasadaManu Fernandez/Associated PressSánchez, que ha gobernado España durante cinco años, permanecerá como líder de un gobierno interino mientras se determina la composición de un nuevo gobierno o la fecha de las nuevas elecciones.Los analistas han indicado que los votantes españoles se cansaron de los extremos de derecha e izquierda y buscaron volver al centro. Una nueva elección, dijeron, continuaría esa tendencia y muy probablemente marginaría aún más la influencia de Vox. El Partido Popular espera recuperar sus votos y crecer lo suficiente como para gobernar por sí solo.Sánchez, uno de los líderes progresistas favoritos de la Unión Europea, presidió un repunte económico, pero alienó a muchos votantes al dar marcha atrás en sus promesas y forjar alianzas con partidos políticos asociados con los independentistas catalanes, así como con exterroristas vascos que alguna vez también buscaron separarse de España.Arnold Merino, de 43 años, quien votó por el conservador Partido Popular, dijo que había tenido dificultad para tomar una decisión de último momento. “La gente no confiaba en él”.El presidente del Gobierno Pedro Sánchez, en campaña en Getafe, España, la semana pasadaVioleta Santos Moura/ReutersSánchez convocó a elecciones anticipadas —se habían programado para fines de año— luego de unos duros resultados en las elecciones locales y regionales de mayo.En los últimos días de la contienda, los socialistas y la plataforma de extrema izquierda, Sumar, proyectaron optimismo ante la posibilidad de cambiar las cosas, ya que las encuestas los mostraban a la zaga. Las vallas publicitarias de toda España mostraban a Sánchez con un aspecto juvenil y afable bajo un letrero que decía “Adelante” junto a fotografías en blanco y negro de los líderes conservadores que decían “Atrás”.El Partido Popular se oponía menos a las propuestas políticas que a Sánchez. Tanto los conservadores como sus aliados de extrema derecha realizaron una campaña muy crítica de Sánchez, o de un estilo de gobierno que llamaron “sanchismo”, diciendo que no se podía confiar en él porque incumplió su palabra a los votantes, hizo alianzas con la extrema izquierda y llegó a acuerdos electoralmente ventajosos que antepusieron su propia supervivencia política al interés nacional.Aun así, España parecía ser en los últimos años un punto brillante para los liberales. Sánchez mantuvo baja la inflación, redujo las tensiones con los independentistas en Cataluña y aumentó la tasa de crecimiento económico, las pensiones y el salario mínimo.Pero la alianza entre Sánchez e independentistas profundamente polarizadores y fuerzas de extrema izquierda alimentó el resentimiento entre muchos votantes. Toda la campaña, que incluyó a Sánchez y su aliado de extrema izquierda advirtiendo contra el extremismo de Vox, se volvió contra las malas compañías de los aliados de los principales partidos.Yolanda Díaz, líder del partido de izquierda Sumar, en Madrid el domingoVincent West/ReutersY, sin embargo, a pesar de todo lo que se habló sobre el extremismo, los resultados mostraron que los votantes españoles, muchos de los cuales fueron perseguidos por la dictadura y las décadas de terrorismo generadas por disputas territoriales relacionadas, se volcaron hacia el centro.El partido Vox, ampliamente visto como un claro descendiente de la dictadura de Franco, perdió 19 escaños. Su discurso se concentró en la oposición al aborto, a los derechos de la comunidad LGBTQ, la intromisión de la Unión Europea en los asuntos españoles y es férreamente antiinmigrante.Merino dijo que pensaba que la gente deseaba volver al bipartidismo “porque brinda estabilidad”. Y añadió que con el Partido Popular la gente sabe lo que habrá.El líder de Vox, Santiago Abascal, se separó del Partido Popular en medio de un escándalo de fondos para sobornos en 2013. Vox comenzó con trucos como cubrir Gibraltar, el extremo sur del país controlado por Gran Bretaña desde 1713, con una bandera española.También publicó videos con realidades alternas en las que los musulmanes imponían la sharía en el sur de España y convertían la catedral de Córdoba en una mezquita. En otro video, musicalizado con la banda sonora de El señor de los anillos, una piedra angular de la cultura para la nueva extrema derecha de Europa, Abascal dirige un grupo de hombres a caballo para reconquistar Europa.Para Aurora Rodil, concejala por Vox en la localidad sureña de Elche que ya gobernó con el alcalde del Partido Popular, todo esto era muy alegórico y bonito. “Hay tanto por reconquistar en España”, dijo.Pero la votación del domingo sugirió que habían sido derrotados.Ramón Campoy, de 35 años, dijo que España estaba de veras equilibrada, mientras se tomaba un descanso del trabajo el viernes en Barcelona, ​​parado bajo la bandera LGBTQ en una plaza adornada con una estatua ecuestre de Ramón Berenguer III, el gobernante coronado de Cataluña en el siglo XI.Campoy agregó que el país, a su parecer, estaba de veras en el centro.Jason Horowitz es el jefe del buró en Roma; cubre Italia, Grecia y otras partes del sur de Europa. Cubrió la campaña presidencial de 2016 en Estados Unidos, el gobierno de Obama y al Congreso estadounidense con un énfasis en reportajes especiales y perfiles políticos. @jasondhorowitz More

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      Spain Elections: Results Show No Party With Enough Votes to Govern

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      The returns showed no party winning the support needed to govern, leaving the country facing weeks of uncertainty.Spain was thrust into political uncertainty on Sunday after national elections left no party with enough support to form a government, most likely resulting in weeks of horse trading or potentially a new vote later this year.Returns showed most votes were divided between the center right and center left. But neither the governing Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez nor his conservative opponents won enough ballots to govern alone in the 350-seat Parliament.While the conservatives came out ahead, the allies they might have partnered with to form a government in the hard-right Vox party saw their support crater, as Spaniards rejected extremist parties.The outcome was an inconclusive election and a political muddle that has become familiar to Spaniards since their two-party system fractured nearly a decade ago. It seemed likely to leave Spain in political limbo at an important moment when it holds the rotating presidency of the European Council as it faces down Russian aggression in Ukraine.With 99 percent of the returns in, the conservative Popular Party won 136 seats in Parliament, compared with 122 for the Socialists. But they had hoped to win an absolute majority and govern without Vox, which many of the party’s own officials consider anachronistic, anathema to Spain’s moderate values and dangerous.“I feel very proud,” the party’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said shortly after midnight, arguing before a crowd waving Spanish flags that since his party won the election, he had the right to form a government.But his speech had a clearly defensive tone, and he said that the candidates who have won the most votes have always governed, arguing that it would be an “anomaly” if it didn’t happen this time, and would tarnish Spain’s reputation abroad. He said his goal was to spare Spain a period of “uncertainty.”Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, after voting in Madrid on Sunday.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressOutside, the lyrics “Tonight’s going to be a good night” echoed amid a celebratory atmosphere, but supporters understood that it was not really a good night for their party.“I thought they were going to win big,” said Isabel Ruiz, 24, who wore a Spanish flag over her shoulders. She said she was prepared to keep voting to get rid of Mr. Sánchez.A political mess is not new to Spain. In 2016, the country spent 10 months in political limbo as it careened from election to election. Then Mr. Sánchez ousted the conservative prime minister and gained power in a parliamentary maneuver in 2018. More elections followed until Mr. Sánchez ultimately cobbled together a minority government with the far left and support in Parliament from small independence parties.This time, Mr. Sánchez, a political survivalist of the first order, once again defied expectations, increasing his party’s seats in Parliament and gaining enough support with his left-wing allies for now to block the formation of a conservative government.“The Spanish people have been clear,” he said Sunday evening outside his party’s headquarters, arguing that a larger number of Spaniards wanted to stay on the progressive track.The prime minister could potentially win another term if all the available parties opposed to the Popular Party and Vox backed him — an extremely difficult task.“The reactionary bloc has failed,” Mr. Sánchez said.In the weeks leading up to the election, Mr. Sánchez and his left-wing allies raised fears about his conservative opponents’ willingness to ally with Vox, potentially making it the first hard-right party to join the government since the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco nearly 50 years ago.The prospect of Vox sharing power in government unnerved many Spaniards and sent ripples through the European Union and its remaining liberal strongholds, surprising many who had considered Spain inoculated against political extremes since the Franco regime ended in the 1970s.Vox’s ascension, liberals argued, would amount to a troubling watershed for Spain and yet another sign of the rise of the right in Europe. Instead, Vox sank, and may have brought down the chances for the Popular Party to govern with it.A Vox rally in Madrid last week.Manu Fernandez/Associated PressMr. Sánchez, who has governed Spain for five years, will remain as leader of a caretaker government as the composition of a new government, or timing of new elections, is worked out.Analysts have noted that Spain’s voters had grown tired of the extremes of the right and left and had sought to return to the center. A new election, they said, would continue that trend, and most likely further marginalize Vox’s influence. The Popular Party hopes that it would take back their votes and grow large enough to govern on its own.A progressive darling of the European Union, Mr. Sánchez presided over an economic rebound, but he alienated many voters by backtracking on promises and building alliances with political parties associated with the Catalan secessionists as well as former Basque terrorists who also once sought to split from Spain.“I had a hard time deciding up to the last minute,” said Arnold Merino, 43, who voted for the Popular Party. “People didn’t trust him.”Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, campaigning in Getafe, Spain, last week.Violeta Santos Moura/ReutersMr. Sánchez called the elections early — they had been scheduled at the end of the year — after a bruising in local and regional elections in May.In the closing days of the race, the Socialists and the far-left umbrella group, Sumar, projected optimism about the possibility of turning things around as polls showed them trailing. Billboards around Spain showed Mr. Sánchez looking youthful and suave under a sign for “Forward” next to black-and-white pictures of the conservative leaders reading, “Backward.”The Popular Party ran less on policy proposals than against Mr. Sánchez. Both the conservatives and their hard-right allies ran a campaign sharply critical of Mr. Sánchez, or a style of governing they called “Sanchismo,” saying he could not be trusted as he broke his word to voters, made alliances with the far left and cut electorally advantageous deals that put his own political survival ahead of the national interest.Even so, Spain seemed in recent years to be a bright spot for liberals. Mr. Sánchez kept inflation low, reduced tensions with separatists in Catalonia and increased the economic growth rate, pensions and the minimum wage.But the alliance between Mr. Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces fueled resentment among many voters. The entire campaign, which included Mr. Sánchez and his far-left ally warning against the extremism of Vox, turned on the bad company of the main parties’ allies.Yolanda Diaz, leader of the left-wing Sumar party, in Madrid on Sunday.Vincent West/ReutersAnd yet, for all the talk about extremism, results showed that Spanish voters, many of whom were haunted by the dictatorship and the decades of terrorism spawned by related territorial disputes, turned to the center.The Vox party, widely seen as a clear descendant of Franco’s dictatorship, lost 19 seats. It ran on opposition to abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights and European Union meddling in Spanish affairs, and is staunchly anti-immigrant.“I think people want to go back to bipartisanship, because it provides stability,” said Mr. Merino. “With the Popular Party, you know what you are getting.”The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party amid a slush-fund scandal in 2013. Vox started with stunts like draping Gibraltar, the southern tip of the country controlled by Britain since 1713, with a Spanish flag.It filmed alternate realities in which Muslims imposed Shariah law in southern Spain and turned the Cathedral of Cordoba back into a mosque. In another video, scored to the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings, a cultural touchstone for Europe’s new hard right, Mr. Abascal leads a posse of men on horseback to reconquer Europe.“It’s very allegoric, but it’s also beautiful,” said Aurora Rodil, a Vox deputy mayor of the southern town of Elche who already governed with the Popular Party mayor. “There’s so much to be reconquered in Spain.”Sunday’s vote, however, suggested that they had been beaten back.“Spain is really balanced,” said Ramon Campoy, 35, as he took a break from work on Friday in Barcelona, standing under the L.G.B.T.Q. flag in a square graced by an equestrian statue of Ramon Berenguer III, the crowned 11th-century ruler of Catalonia.Mr. Campoy added, “I think the country is really in the center.” More

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      Elecciones generales de España: resultados en vivo

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      En estas elecciones se votarán los 350 escaños del Congreso de los Diputados, el principal órgano legislativo de España. Si ningún partido obtiene la mayoría absoluta —un escenario probable—, los partidos negociarán hasta formar una coalición gobernante. Mayoría absoluta Izquierda Derecha Sin escaños aún Partido Votos Percent Escaños Gráfico del número de escaños 0 0% […] More

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      Spain General Election 2023: Live Results

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      This election will allocate all 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s primary legislative body. If no single party receives an outright majority in Congress ⎯ a likely scenario ⎯ the parties will negotiate until they form a governing coalition. Seats needed for a majority Major left parties Major right parties No seats allocated […] More