Lavengro in Spain

Spanish election results

Counted 100%
Total seats 350
Votes counted: 24,590,557 - 71.69 %
Abstentions: 9,710,775 - 28.31 %
Invalid votes: 31,7886 - 1.29 %
Blank votes: 33,3095 - 1.37 %

PARTY / SEATS / VOTES / %

PP / 186 / 10,830,693 / 44.62%
PSOE / 110 / 6,973,880 / 28.73%
CiU / 16 / 101,4263 / 4.17%
IU / 11 / 168,0810 / 6.92%
AMAIUR / 7 / 33,3628 / 1.37%
UPyD / 5 / 114,0242 / 4.69%
PNV / 5 / 32,3517 / 1.33%
ERC / 3 / 25,6393 / 1.05%
BNG / 2 / 18,3279 / 0.75%
CC/NC/PNC / 2 / 143,550    0.59%
COMPROMÍS-Q / 1 / 125,150 / 0.51%
FAC / 1 / 99173 / 0.4%

PP - Conservative
PSOE - Social Democrat
CiU - Centre Right Catalan Nationalists
IU - Left Socialists
AMAIUR - Very dodgy Basque Nationalists (left), coalition including Bildu (Sinn Féin equivalent). Able to stand now that ETA says it has stopped murdering people.
UPyD - New Centrist party
PNV - Not quite so dodgy Basque Nationalists (Christian Democrat)
ERC - Left Catalan Republicans
BNG - Left Galician Nationalists
CC etc. - Canarians
Compromís-Q - Valencian Left Ecologists
FAC - Asturian party (one-man show, breakaway from the PP)

The PSOE won only two provinces (constituencies), Barcelona and Seville.The PP got a seat in Girona (Catalonia), the only province where it had never held a seat.

Note the disproportion in votes/seats between PNV and CiU, which have votes concentrated in small areas, and UPyD and IU, which have broader national appeal.

The only BNP-type far right party in Spain is Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC), which got 59,781 votes, 1.73% in Catalonia equivalent to 0.24% in all of Spain. The Francoist FE de las JONS got 2,901 votes (0.01%)

IU has gone up from 2 to 11 seats as people on the Left move from PSOE. The phenomenon of these parties acting as 'communicating vessels' is well known here. However, the two parties together have lost 50 seats.

Full details here (El País)

My post on Voting in Spain explains the procedure for voting by post and in person, and for counting the votes.

Eurodoom – or perhaps not

While British Eurosceptics are quick to write off the euro as being doomed, those who care to look will see a curious thing. Despite the current crisis the euro has held its own with sterling for the last three years, This graph from Oanda.com shows how there was a great devaluation of sterling in 2008 but since then there has been no real overall change in the exchange rate. Obviously the markets do not see the state of the euro in such dire terms as the British media do. Or perhaps sterling is just as doomed as the euro.