Spain headed into at least months of uncertainty after elections

Spaniards may be headed into months of political uncertainty - and possibly worse - following the results of Sunday´s elections, according to some political observers.

The centre-right Popular Party (Partido Popular) came off with 28.71% of the votes, but that will only give it 123 seats in parliament, far short of the 176 needed to form a majority.

While that was roughly as predicted by multiple polls ahead of Sunday´s vote, the centrist Citizens party was expected to make up more of the short-fall than it did.

The party led by political-newcomer Albert Rivera garnered only 13.91% of the votes, giving them 40 MPs in Madrid.

One option for a stable government might be a centre-right coalition between PP, Citizens, and the two main nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country.

Such coalitions were fairly common in the mid-1990s, but given the current tensions between Madrid and the regional government in the former of those two regions, in particular, that may well be completetely untenable now.

One of the clear surprises of the previous night´s vote was the fact that the far-left, anti-austerity movement We can (Podemos) fared better than Citizens, obtaining a total of 69 seats in parliament.

The polls in the weeks just before the 20 December vote had shown that it had fallen behind Citizens in voting intentions.

What may never be known is if those polls were simply faulty or whether Podemos benefitted from a late wave of support, in part due to the impression that it had become the 'under-dog'.

Likewise, one political commentator told Digital Look he believed the decision by Albert Rivera on Friday to announce that he would not oppose the most-voted party (which was always likely to be the Partido Popular) may have robbed him of some support.

Thus, some commentators now believed that it might be months before some coalition government took shape. Indeed, before the results were known two political observers told Digital Look that new elections in a year´s time were a real possibility.

Another question which might need to be resolved is who would lead the Popular Party, the current Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy or if he would pass on the mantle of party head to his lieutenant, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.

Rajoy was held by many to be directly responsible for what many in Spain believed was a weak response to a recent spate of corruption scandals, an accusation which also undermined the Catalan nationalists under the Democracy and Freedom banner (Democracia y Libertad).

Tellingly, perhaps, as far as the country´s current predicament is concerned, in the months before the elections Digital Look spoke with multiple political commentators and the odd politician in Spain.

The emphasis was almost always on what political "message" the different parties should deliver to win the most votes, but rarely on what specific policies were needed to consolidate the country´s recovery.

Fortunately, it was that one high-ranking ex-politician from one of the larger centre-left parties who did seem to have somewhat of a grasp of the economic challenges which Spain was facing.

Nonetheless, in remarks to Digital Look that same politician repeatedly emphasised the need for "equality" over "equity" (for him they are the same thing).

On a more positive note, there were those who believed that the economic realities of the current situation would force politicians in Madrid to hammer out some sort of viable coalition.