Democratic Transition (1975–1982) Second government of Carlos Arias Navarro (1975–1976) Carlos Arias Navarro, who had been the last president of Franco's government, was appointed to this post by Juan Carlos I. After an opening speech, known as the
spirit of February 12, there was a clear reversal in response to the pressures of the
bunker (
gironazo). In a few months, the King's loss of confidence in Arias Navarro became clear, until he obtained his resignation. Together with
Torcuato Fernández Miranda, the king obtained a proposal from the institutions in charge of presenting the shortlist of candidates for the presidency of the government to introduce the name of
Adolfo Suárez, a relatively obscure character coming from the
blue family.
Governments of Adolfo Suarez (1976–1981) in October 1977, after the resumption of diplomatic relations, interrupted since 1939. Mexico had stood out as a refuge for
Spanish Republican exiles. and
Santiago Carrillo in 1978. The prestigious communist poet occupied, together with
La Pasionaria, the
mesa de edad of the first democratic courts, in spite of the disappointing results of the PCE. and
Nicolás Redondo, union leaders of
Comisiones Obreras and
UGT and deputies for the
PCE and
PSOE during the 1970s and 1980s (the photograph is from 2008). To the surprise of Franco's supporters and opponents, who did not expect such an appointment, he began a rapid dismantling of the Francoist institutional edifice, which involved the so-called
harakiri of the Parliament and the calling of a referendum for the approval of the
Political Reform Act. The debate between
reform and rupture presided over the political movements of groups across the political spectrum, from those in favor of maintaining pure Francoism (the bunker) to those in favor of recovering republican legitimacy without any kind of concessions; however, it was the groups that showed greater flexibility and moderation that proved to have the greatest social support and political capacity. The problem of terrorism was intensifying; both from the opposition to Francoism (
ETA of Marxist–Leninist and Basque nationalist ideology, and the
GRAPO of Maoist ideology) and from the
far right, whose simultaneous practice seemed to obey the so-called
action-repression spiral foreseen by the theory of insurrectionary movements, widely spread at the time, with the aim of provoking political involution, in the form of a military coup d'état. The month of January 1977 was particularly violent, when street altercations between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators (with several deaths) coincided with kidnappings of military personnel and high-ranking officials, assassinations of policemen and labor lawyers (the
Atocha massacre). After the mourning manifestation, controlled by the
Communist Party of Spain, at the burial of the lawyers, the prestige of
Santiago Carrillo as a necessary interlocutor for the government increased. After a few months of clandestine negotiations, during the Easter vacations the PCE was legalized, which was seen as a betrayal by an important part of the army, that in spite of this maintained discipline for the most part (largely as a result of the efforts of Vice-president
Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado). As a counterpart demanded by Suarez, Carrillo, in a multitudinous press conference, communicated that his party renounced the republican flag and accepted the parliamentary monarchy and the concept of unity of Spain; it was intended that the military accepted that a party homologated with the communist parties of Western Europe (with whom it had built the concept of
Eurocommunism) was not going to get involved in a revolutionary adventure of Leninist character in pursuit of the dictatorship of the proletariat and would not represent a threat to be reacted to violently. Other important laws, passed in the midst of social contestation, were the
Statute of Workers and the
Statute of Teaching Centers.
Negotiations for joining the European Economic Community dragged on in the face of the reluctance of some countries (especially France), which, added to the increase in unemployment and inflation, in the midst of the
second oil crisis, contributed to a bleak outlook, in which the so-called "years of lead" must be emphasized. The separatist group ETA killed 240 people between 1978 and 1980, especially members of the army, the Civil Guard and the police. ETA's bloodiest year was 1980, when they killed 91 people. The political situation was becoming increasingly untenable. The PSOE presented a motion of censure, which was rejected, but it showed the loneliness of the government. Within the party that supported it, the UCD, the different families (Christian Democrats, Liberals, Social Democrats) began to show ever greater differences of opinion among themselves and with the president. The King himself also let his uneasiness about the political situation and his loss of confidence in Suarez be made public, and his Christmas message of 1980 was interpreted in this way, in spite of the fact that such a function does not correspond to the King in the Constitution. By the beginning of 1981, Suarez understood that he had no other way out but to resign. Among the most outstanding events of Calvo Sotelo's government was the integration of Spain into NATO (May 30, 1982) and the approval of the divorce law (June 22, 1981), promoted by Minister
Francisco Fernández Ordóñez and which had aroused intense opposition from the
Spanish Episcopal Conference, becoming one of the main causes of disagreement within the government party. The autonomic process attempted to be harmonized by means of the
LOAPA (June 30, 1982), a restrictive law which was later dismantled in essential aspects by the
Constitutional court (August 13, 1983).
Governments of Felipe González (1982–1996) Legislatures with a majority (1982–1993) In the
general elections held on October 28, 1982, the PSOE, led by
Felipe González, obtained an absolute majority (202 seats) by winning more than 10 million votes, or 48% of voter support.
Alianza Popular (AP) became the second political force with 106 seats. Meanwhile, the collapse of the UCD and the PCE which obtained eleven and four seats, respectively, presided over the trend of bipartisanship that was to preside from then on over Spanish political life. The new government had to face the economic crisis, while at the same time implementing measures typical of a
social democratic welfare state, increasing public spending on social policies (universal health care with the
General Health Law of 1986, increase in pensions and unemployment coverage,
LOGSE of 1990 which extended compulsory schooling to 16 years of age). The negative effects on employment of industrial
reconversion and
restructuring, added to other liberalizing measures, such as the flexibilization of the labor market or of business hours, provoked the radical opposition of the UGT and CCOO unions, which called the
general strike of December 14, 1988, which paralyzed the country. The rift had been evident since the historic leader of the UGT,
Nicolás Redondo, resigned as a PSOE deputy in 1987 after voting against the budget. In June 1992 and January 1994, union calls for general strikes against Socialist governments were repeated. , in 1989. Inflation was controlled and fiscal policy was improved (creation of the
Tax Agency), reorganizing public accounts in such a way as to facilitate entry into the
European Economic Community, whose accession treaty was signed in June 1985 (official entry on January 1, 1986). On March 12, 1986, NATO membership was guaranteed by means of a
referendum to which Felipe González had committed himself when he was still in the opposition. Per capita income doubled at the same time as the active population and the incorporation of women into the labor force increased. The migratory balance, traditionally negative, became positive, making Spain the largest receiver of immigrants in Europe and one of the largest receivers in the world.
Cohesion Funds obtained from EU institutions were used to improve basic infrastructures. The fragility of economic growth, in a period known as the "
pelotazo", due to the ease with which speculation took place, led to financial imbalances that forced several devaluations in the 1990s. The autonomous process ended with the configuration of seventeen autonomous communities and two autonomous cities, which began to have their own institutions and legislation, and to coordinate with the state and municipal ones through highly complex negotiations, especially those related to financing. There was still the problem of ETA violence, an organization that perpetrated two massacres in 1987, in a
shopping mall in Barcelona and in the
Casa Cuartel in Zaragoza. Due to this, the socialist government attempted all sorts of solutions: internal political pressure based on consensus among the democratic parties (
Madrid Agreement on Terrorism of November 5, 1987 and the
Ajuria Enea Pact of January 12, 1988), attempted negotiations (ETA truce of January 8, 1988, or the Algiers talks initiated earlier and maintained until April 4, 1988), and French police and judicial collaboration (linked to the improvement of political and economic relations). As it was later demonstrated (in a judicial process promoted among others by
El Mundo, a right-wing newspaper, and by
Judge Garzón who re-entered the judicial career after a brief and conflictive period in politics as a PSOE deputy), several high-ranking officials of the first Socialist governments (among them the minister
José Barrionuevo and the secretary of security
Rafael Vera) had promoted between 1982 and 1986
State terrorism or a
dirty war through the activity of the so-called
Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups (GAL), which carried out several attacks in French territory against members of ETA.
Legislature in minority (1993–1996) The "92" was a conjunction of events of such magnitude in Spain: the Olympic Games of Barcelona and the
Universal Exposition of Seville, which also meant the realization of important road infrastructures such as the first
high-speed railroad line (AVE) that linked Madrid with Seville. After that unrepeatable year, a period of crisis began that would last until 1997. The economic crisis (at the end of 1993 the unemployment rate reached 24% and in less than a year three successive devaluations of the peseta were carried out) was compounded by the excessive extraordinary expenditures made by the public administration for the "1992 celebrations". The V Legislature was marked by a climate of political tension generated by the public knowledge of corruption cases that directly affected the government of the State. Among them, that of the director of the Civil Guard,
Luis Roldán and his embezzlement of public funds, and his subsequent flight from the country, and that of the governor of the Bank of Spain,
Mariano Rubio, who was put on trial. At the same time, allegations of corruption implicated high-ranking officials of the Administration and government for their political responsibilities, and the judicial investigations continued with figures from the private sector. Among them,
Mario Conde, after the intervention of the Bank of Spain in the banking institution he presided over,
Banesto; and
Javier de la Rosa, financially important after his intervention in the Kuwaiti multinational KIO. In 1995, new scandals associated with the government appeared: the new declarations of the accused in the "GAL case",
José Amedo and Míchel Rodríguez, provoked the reopening of the case by the judge of the Audiencia Nacional,
Baltasar Garzón. This case involved
José Barrionuevo and
Rafael Vera, minister and secretary of state, respectively, of the Ministry of the Interior during the 1st González Legislature; both were judged by the
Supreme court and sentenced to prison sentences for kidnapping and embezzlement in 1998. On May 28, 1995, municipal elections were held throughout the State and regional elections were held on the same day in all the Communities except Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country, the Partido Popular won in ten autonomous communities and was the most voted party in 42 provincial capitals —for the first time in its history it managed to win a national election—. The crisis of corruption cases, combined with the failure to comply with the
parameters required for European convergence according to the Maastricht agreements, led to a rift between CiU and the PSOE. When the General State Budget Law was rejected in Congress due to the lack of support from
Convergència i Unió, Felipe González dissolved the Parliament and called an early general election.
Governments of José María Aznar (1996–2004) On March 3, 1996,
José María Aznar's Partido Popular won the
general elections, although with a minimal majority. The PP obtained 156 seats and the PSOE 141. The difference in votes between the two parties was around 300,000 votes. As a result, for his investiture as President of the Government he had to reach a pact with CiU (with whom he had an arduous negotiation that ended with the
Majestic pacts), the PNV and the
Canary Islands Coalition (CC). The new PP government set out to meet the
convergence criteria of the
Maastricht Treaty so that the Spanish economy could join the
group of countries that would share the new European currency: the
euro. The economic recovery was consolidated in the first period of the PP government. An anti-inflationary policy and budgetary rigor practiced by
Rodrigo Rato, the privatization of state-owned companies and the excellent international situation made possible a period of economic growth, with unemployment and inflation falling. In 1999, with most of the criteria fulfilled, Spain was accepted as a member of the
Eurozone, establishing a rate of 166.386
pesetas per euro. Peseta coins and banknotes ceased to circulate on March 1, 2002. The police success of the release of prison officer
José Antonio Ortega Lara, who suffered the longest kidnapping by the separatist group ETA (532 days) in inhumane conditions on July 1, 1997, was immediately overshadowed ten days later. On July 10, ETA kidnapped the PP councilman in the Biscayan town of
Ermua (Basque Country)
Miguel Angel Blanco. ETA's demands were unacceptable to the Aznar government: the transfer of more than 500 ETA prisoners to the prisons of the Basque Country within two days. After 48 hours of anguished waiting, in which millions of Spaniards mobilized in numerous demonstrations — in Bilbao the largest demonstration in its history was held — on July 12, ETA killed Blanco. ETA's reputation rapidly deteriorated, even among part of its social base in the Basque Country. A change of strategy was proposed and made public by the nationalist parties: the
Lizarra Pact (September 12, 1998). Signed by the PNV,
EA,
Herri Batasuna and
IU-Ezquer Batúa, the pact was a secessionist plan that committed itself to dialogue on some ETA postulates. Four days later, on the 16th, for the first time in its history, ETA declared an "indefinite truce", which led the government to accept the beginning of talks (November of that same year) which did not lead to any positive result, and which Minister
Mayor Oreja later called a
trap truce (September 1999). On November 28, 1999, ETA broke the truce. In the
2000 general elections, the PP won an absolute majority, which allowed it to carry out its policies without the constraint of seeking support from the peripheral nationalist parties. The year 2000 ended after a brutal ETA offensive in which 23 people were murdered. Trade union opposition to the new labor reform decree was substantiated in the general strike of 20-J (2002).
Compulsory military service was abolished and the
National Hydrological Plan was promoted. In foreign policy, Aznar clearly aligned himself with the United States, becoming one of its main European allies (
Azores trio) in the conflicts following the terrorist attack against the US (9/11): the
war in Afghanistan and the
war in Iraq. The ecological disaster caused by the
Prestige oil tanker accident (2002–2004, possibly aggravated by the confused political management, which generated the
Nunca Mais protest movement) was added to the scandal resulting from the
Yak-42 accident and the great opposition of public opinion to Aznar's support for the
Bush Administration in its invasion of Iraq, without the consent of the UN (
No to war protest movement), discrediting the government and the Popular Party, which nevertheless managed to maintain acceptable results in the
autonomic and municipal elections of 2003, won by the PSOE (7,999,178 votes against 7,875,762 for the PP). Aznar had promised not to run in a third election. Three names were being considered to replace him as candidate:
Rodrigo Rato,
Jaime Mayor Oreja and
Mariano Rajoy, who was finally chosen by the president himself. Three days before the
2004 general elections, the
11-M attacks on several commuter trains in Madrid took place, resulting in 191 dead and 1858 injured, the worst terrorist attack in the history of Spain and Europe in peacetime. The attacks shocked the country and caused confusion within the government itself, which at first attributed them to ETA. After a united demonstration of repulsion held the following day, which brought more than 12 million people into the streets throughout the country, and as evidence began to emerge that the attacks were the work of
Islamic terrorism (later disputed by the media — especially the newspaper
El Mundo which continues to support alternative theories to the judicial investigation), the discontent and the idea that the attacks were the work of ETA and that they were the work of the Islamic terrorist group, the government's own government was unable to make any progress, the discontent and the idea that information about the authorship was being concealed began to circulate within the government, and on the same day of reflection illegal demonstrations were called in front of the headquarters of the Popular Party. In the
general elections of March 14, the PSOE of Rodríguez Zapatero achieved an unexpected electoral success. The turnout was very high, over 77%, and the PSOE won more than 10,900,000 votes and 164 seats. Defeated by this
punishment vote was Mariano Rajoy, head of the PP list.
Governments of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004–2011) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made a significant statement on the second day of his term of office with a decision of great international impact: the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, in fulfillment of his electoral promise, although surprising for its immediacy, communicated even before the formation of his government. In domestic policy, the
increase in the minimum wage (one of the lowest in Europe) opened the way for other social reforms, including the authorization of
homosexual marriage (June 30, 2005), much protested by the Catholic Church, and the
Dependency Law (November 30, 2006). Other social measures of great impact were the introduction of the points-based license for traffic offenses (2006) and the successive extensions of the smoking ban (2006 and 2011), which ended up being extended to practically all public spaces. Other issues were postponed for the following legislature, such as the reform of the
abortion law (February 24, 2010). Before the UN, Zapatero proposed the
Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative of international collaboration which he co-led with the Turkish president
Erdogan. The approval by
referendum of the
European constitution on February 20, 2005, was inoperative, given the
failure of similar mechanisms in France and the
Netherlands. Several communities initiated the procedure for the reform of their statutes of autonomy. The so-called
Ibarretxe Plan, not proposed as a statutory reform but as a sovereignty initiative for the Basque Country, was rejected by the Parliament (February 1, 2005). The
reform of the Catalan Statute was even more controversial; despite passing through all the legislative procedures with various modifications and entering into effect after the referendum of June 18, 2006, it was the subject of an
appeal of unconstitutionality processed in an eventful manner by the
Constitutional court, which did not issue its ruling until June 28, 2010, restrictively interpreting certain parts of the text and invalidating others. During almost the whole of 2006,
government contacted ETA in a context of a "permanent ceasefire" declared by the terrorist group and protests by the Popular Party, the
Association of Victims of Terrorism and the conservative-oriented media, which proved unsuccessful after the
attack at T4 of Madrid-Barajas airport in which two people were killed (December 30, 2006). Police, judicial and international pressure proved to be more effective, which led to the consecutive arrests of the leadership teams that succeeded each other at the top of the terrorist group; and the prevention, by means of legislative reforms and judicial decisions, of the
political groups organized around ETA from obtaining political representation in city councils and parliaments, as they were partially or totally outlawed in some or other elections (especially since the Anti-Terrorist Pact of 2000 and the
Law of Parties of 2002, both with the consensus of PP and PSOE, which was maintained, with occasional tensions, with both parties in opposition or government positions). During an
Ibero-American conference there was a verbal incident between the King and the Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez, which became very popular ("
¿Por qué no te callas?", November 10, 2007); and which is used as an example of the complexity of the
relations between Spain and Latin America. These relations, intensified both economically and politically, are denounced as
neo-colonialist by the
indigenist current of opinion, while conservative opinion within Spain criticizes as counterproductive and naive the maintenance of relatively friendly relations with the government of Cuba and others of similar orientation, described as
populist and contrary to Spanish interests. After the
general elections of March 9, 2008 (whose final campaign acts had to be suspended due to the murder of
Isaías Carrasco by ETA), the majority of the PSOE and the second place of the PP were repeated. Both parties increased their number of deputies. The nationalist parties and Izquierda Unida decreased their representation, while a new national party appeared:
Unión Progreso y Democracia, for which
Rosa Díez obtained a deputy's seat. The debate around the
Law of Historical Memory, dating from the previous legislature, reached its peak as a result of
Judge Garzón's decision to initiate legal proceedings against the crimes of Francoism (October 16, 2008); and the reaction against him, that, in addition to his removal from the case, which had no continuity, was substantiated in three simultaneous judicial proceedings for various reasons, some linked to that matter and others unrelated, but also with political repercussions, which led to his suspension as judge of the National Court, in the midst of an international scandal (May 14, 2010). in Madrid was the focal point of the protests of the indignados movement. . As the
external border of the European Union, it is one of the points with the greatest migratory pressure. After the
years of economic boom (1997–2008) when
millions of immigrants arrived, reaching more than 10% of the population, the
economic crisis turned Spain back into a
country of emigrants. Most of these were immigrants returning to their countries of origin, although a considerable number were young Spaniards seeking better opportunities in other countries. The projections suggest a compromised future for
Spanish demographics, in which only emigration could compensate for negative vegetative growth and aging. The
world economic-financial crisis (which began in 2008), added to a national real estate crisis, had a very serious impact on the Spanish economy, which, after experiencing the end of the so-called
2008 bubble, suffered several consecutive quarters of falling GDP and an increase in unemployment, which in the third quarter of 2011 reached the historic figure of five million unemployed (more than 20% of the active population); and even on the demographic structure, producing for the first time in decades a reversal of migratory movements (more emigration than immigration). The
sovereign debt crisis in Greece, which became a true
Eurozone crisis, led European governments, and even US president
Barack Obama, to demand drastic measures to reduce the public deficit from Spain (which held the rotating presidency of the EU during that six-month period). Zapatero's decision (May 12, 2010) to reduce civil servants' salaries and not to increase pensions was described as an unprecedented measure in the history of Spanish democracy, questioning the maintenance of the welfare state model. The pressure of the debt markets on the peripheral countries of the European Union (known as PIGS) and the demanding attitude of German chancellor
Angela Merkel even imposed a constitutional reform which was urgently carried out on August 23, 2011, by consensus of the two main Spanish parties (PP and PSOE), when Prime Minister Zapatero had already communicated his intention to dissolve the Parliament and call an early general election. In the
Catalan autonomous elections (November 28, 2010),
Convergencia i Unió won a victory without an absolute majority, which was enough for
Artur Mas to be appointed president of the Generalitat, displacing the previous left-wing
tripartite government. The following elections gave victory to the Partido Popular, which managed to accumulate an unprecedented majority in the democratic period, with absolute
majorities in most of the autonomous communities and
city councils on May 22, 2011, and in Congress and the Senate on the November 20, 2011 (in the
early elections held for the PSOE. Zapatero did not participate in the elections, replaced by
Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba — who obtained the worst results for his party since 1977 — while the representation of minority parties such as
Izquierda Unida and
Unión Progreso y Democracia increased. The presence in the Basque institutions of the
abertzale left, under the name
Bildu, which won the
mayoralty of San Sebastian and the
Provincial Council of Guipuzcoa (municipal elections and the
Juntas Generales, May 22, 2011), led to the convening of a so-called
International Peace Conference in San Sebastian (October 17, 2011), received with varying degrees of skepticism by the other political groups and with the presence of international personalities. The final declaration of that conference was used by the terrorist group ETA to announce "that it has decided the definitive cessation of its armed activity" (October 20, 2011). After 829 fatalities, ETA put an end to 43 years of death and terror. The end of ETA's barbarity led to a remarkable electoral representation of the
abertzale left, under the name of
Amaiur, in the general elections (November 20, 2011). Since May 15, 2011,
the indignados or 15-M movement has been at the forefront of new social mobilizations, with characteristics similar to some extent to other simultaneous protest movements in other countries, such as the
Arab Spring or
Occupy Wall Street. More significantly, the role of the majority trade union centrals in social protests has been considered low-profile, despite the call for a
general strike against the adjustment measures of May 2010 or the protests against cuts in autonomous communities governed by the PP since mid-2011 (notably, against the measures taken by the Ministry of Education of the Community of Madrid for the beginning of the 2011–2012 school year:
Marea Verde). On the other hand, much more notable (and negative in most public opinion) was the social impact of large-scale strikes such as that of the Madrid Metro in June 2010 or
air traffic controllers during Christmas 2010, which motivated an unprecedented government initiative: the declaration of a state of emergency.
First government of Mariano Rajoy (2011–2015) addresses the convention of the
European People's Party on December 8, 2011, after his electoral victory and a few days before being invested Prime Minister of Spain. On December 21, 2011,
Mariano Rajoy was installed as prime minister. Faced with the seriousness of the economic situation (recession and unemployment, which continued to increase) and the urgency of controlling the public deficit (whose figures deviated significantly from those declared until then, reaching over 8% of GDP), the new government of the Partido Popular decided to raise taxes (VAT and personal income tax), increase reduction of public spending in all areas of expenditure, including dependency, health, education, and research and development, and to promote reforms, particularly in the labour market with the reduction of the cost of dismissal and the application of collective bargaining agreements. The financial crisis forced the nationalization of several institutions, among them
Bankia (where several savings banks affected by the so-called real estate bubble had merged), and the request (June 9, 2012) for a "partial bailout" from the European Union (initially for a maximum of 100 billion euros, which materialized in 39 billion in December, amid rumors about the opportunity to request a "total bailout" of the Spanish economy, as the risk premium, the differential with the interest of the German ten-year bond, fluctuated). The social protest was directed by the trade unions in two general strikes (
29-M and
14-N) and in numerous sectoral strikes, together with massive mobilizations of a very different social base (
Marea Verde, 25-S: surrounding the Congress, protests in the health and judicial fields). The only one that achieved a positive political reaction was the mobilization against evictions, centered on the demand for the
payment in kind for mortgages. There was also an increase in territorial-based protests. After a massive
pro-independence demonstration on the Diada (September 11, 2012), Artur Mas called early
regional elections (November 25), pledging to call a referendum aimed at turning Catalonia into "a new state of the European Union". Despite the poor results for his political force (he lost 12 seats), the advance of Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña allowed him to be re-invested president by agreeing with them on a "sovereigntist" program. The
Basque regional elections (October 21) brought the PNV (
Íñigo Urkullu) back to power, with a more moderate program, while Bildu became the second political force. Simultaneously, the
Galician regional elections were held, which revalidated the absolute majority of the Partido Popular. Also in the
Andalusian regional elections (March 25) the PP had been the most voted party, but the Andalusian government continued to be exercised by the PSOE, from then on in coalition with Izquierda Unida.
fallero representing the
Bárcenas scandal. The obscene gesture was indeed made by
Luis Bárcenas before the press after returning from a skiing vacation in Canada, in February 2013. The
corruption scandals, whose media repercussions were prolonged by the slow legal proceedings (the cases, already complex themselves, are complicated by the status as
aforados of some of those involved, and remain open for years), affected practically all political, economic and social institutions. These include the
Bárcenas affair (the treasurer of the PP, who would have collected illegal donations from individuals and companies interested in public procurement or political decisions, allocating them to the financing of the party, to the leaders' bonuses or to his own enrichment),
ERE case in Andalusia (misuse of public subsidies, which affected members of the PSOE, including former presidents
Manuel Chaves and
José Antonio Griñán), the
Nóos case (company run by
Iñaki Urdangarín, son-in-law of the king, which affected autonomous communities and city councils on the Balearic Islands mostly governed by the PP led by
Jaume Matas), the
Gürtel case (which affected the PP of Madrid and Valencia), the
Pujol case (which affected the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia and his family), and the
Bankia case (which, through the scandal of preferential loans, the fraudulent IPO and "black cards", implicated all the parties and unions represented on the board of directors of the former
Caja Madrid). The president of the Catalan autonomous government,
Artur Mas, announced at the end of 2013 a plan for a referendum on self-determination for Catalonia for November 9 of the following year. The pro-independence movement had led during the
Diada of September 11 another massive demonstration, which on that occasion took the form of a
400 km human chain. The
elections to the European Parliament held on May 25, 2014, meant a strong punishment for the two main parties, PP and PSOE, which lost respectively 2.6 and 2.5 million votes; neither of them reached half of the votes (in the previous European elections of 2009 they had reached 81%). The other half of the votes was distributed among the various nationalist candidacies,
La Izquierda Plural (10.03% of the votes, formed around Izquierda Unida and the Greens) and a group of emerging forces among which the
Podemos candidacy stood out (7.98% of the votes, led by university professor
Pablo Iglesias, created in January of the same year as one of the initiatives arising from the movement of the "indignados" of
15-M), while UPyD (6.5% of the votes) disputed its political space with
Ciudadanos (3.16% of the votes). In the following months the possibility of collaboration between both forces was raised, but the contacts did not bear fruit and a serious internal crisis began in UPyD, while the expectations of
Ciudadanos grew. The prestige of the royal family suffered as a result of several scandals, including that of the
Infanta Cristina (imputed, de-imputed and who finally declared as imputed in the prosecution of her husband Iñaki Urdangarín for economic crimes) and the accidents of
one of her grandsons (who, despite being a minor, went shooting with
his father, who was divorced from his mother, the
Infanta Elena) and of King Juan Carlos himself (during an elephant hunt in Botswana that had not been communicated to the Government). == Reign of Felipe VI (since 2014) ==