Image copyright Reuters Image caption Pedro Sanchez had refused to make a deal

The leader of Spain's opposition Socialists, Pedro Sanchez, has resigned, in a move that could end months of political deadlock.

Mr Sanchez stood down after losing a vote by the party's federal committee over supporting the formation of a conservative-led governing coalition - a move he had strongly opposed.

The past week had already seen almost half of the party's executive resign.

Spain has been in a political limbo for the past nine months.

The results of a general election in December 2015 left a hung parliament. The majority Popular Party (PP) under acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has sought to form a coalition government but Mr Sanchez repeatedly blocked their attempts.

In attempt to break the stalemate, a second election was held on 26 June 2016 but, again, no party won an absolute majority.

The Socialist Party (PSOE) has long been divided between supporters of Mr Sanchez and those who want to end the stalemate by supporting a coalition.

Many delegates at Saturday's federal committee meeting at party headquarters in Madrid had turned up hoping to force Mr Sanchez out.

On Wednesday, 17 of the 35 members of the PSOE executive resigned in protest at Mr Sanchez's stance. </s> RENATA BRITO

 Barcelona, Spain.- Spain’s ousted prime minister Mariano Rajoy announced Tuesday he will step down as leader of the country’s conservative Popular Party, just days after his government fell in a noconfidence vote prompted by a corruption scandal.

An emotional Rajoy, who has led the party for 15 years, told party members in Madrid that it was time to end his “journey” and hand over the leadership to someone else at a party congress later this year.

“It is the best for me and for the Popular Party, and I think for Spain as well,” the 63-year-old politician said. Lawmakers voted to oust Rajoy as prime minister last Friday following a corruption scandal involving several former members of his party. He was replaced as prime minister by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez </s> Long-time socialist voter Francisco Gómez chained himself to the railings outside his party’s local headquarters in the city of Mérida, in western Spain this week.

He was protesting about the rebellion against his party’s leader, Pedro Sánchez. A few hours earlier, 17 members of the socialist executive had resigned in a bid to unseat the leader, and as Sánchez and another 17 loyalists stood firm, an all-out, very public, war had been unleashed in the heart of the party.

“They’ve been pulling the rug from under Pedro Sánchez for ages,” Gómez said, warning that he and other grassroots members of the party would not let it be turned into a “brothel”.

Gómez’s direct action reflects the scale of the drama within the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Founded in 1879, it has a long and illustrious history and has governed for 21 of the last 34 years. But the party’s current woes represent its biggest crisis since the transition to democracy of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“During the Spanish transition there was a common saying, which still applies today,” Juan Francisco Fuentes , a historian of the Socialist party, told The Irish Times. “There are three kinds of enemies: enemies, arch enemies and party colleagues.” The PSOE is currently taking political self-destruction to unbelievable extremes.”

This crisis was triggered by the results of two regional elections last Sunday. The socialists lost ground in both, slipping to third place in Galicia and fourth in the Basque Country.

It was the latest in a series of electoral disasters for the party, following a worst-ever result in the inconclusive December 2015 general election, and an even poorer one in the June rerun. Sánchez responded to complaints about the weekend’s performance and his leadership by calling a snap leadership election for later this month, hoping his enemies in the party would not have time to prepare a rival candidacy.

But on Wednesday, Felipe González, a former Socialist prime minister, publicly accused Sánchez of “betraying” him by not abstaining in a congressional investiture vote earlier this month, despite allegedly promising that he would.

The abstention would have allowed conservative Mariano Rajoy to end a nine-month political stalemate in Spain and form a new government. However, it would also have run the risk of alienating traditional socialist voters. Soon afterwards, Sánchez’s rivals broke cover, as the 17 rebels resigned, calling on him to do the same. Sánchez and his team refused, even locking Antonio Pradas, until a few hours earlier the party’s national policy chief, out of the socialist headquarters in Madrid.

In a fierce editorial, El País newspaper, traditionally a supporter of the Socialist party, described Sánchez as “an unscrupulous fool” whose personal ambitions have been holding the country to ransom.

Comparisons have been made with Labour’s split in the UK over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, especially in light of Sánchez’s own tendency to appeal to grassroots supporters for backing. But ideology has barely figured in the Spanish socialists’ current hostilities. Instead, this is a conflict born of personal clashes and confusion generated by a new electoral landscape.

The powerful regional premier of Andalucía, Susana Díaz, is widely seen as being behind the putsch. Her ambition and thinly veiled disdain for Sánchez’s leadership have undermined him ever since he emerged as a relative unknown to take the party’s reins in the summer of 2014.

But Sánchez has also had to contend with the arrival, in that same year, of Podemos as a major rival on the left. Under the leadership of Pablo Iglesias and, buoyed by its status as a relatively untainted new force, Podemos has inevitably hurt the socialists.

Sánchez made his own attempt at forming a government in March, with the support of the liberal Ciudadanos, but fell well short of the votes needed in Congress.

Since then, he has refused to help Rajoy do the same, while insisting he can still reach out and form a leftist alternative. The party is split over this plan and over whether to help Rajoy by abstaining in a future vote, or to sit tight until a December general election and risk losing even more ground.

The party’s economic chief, Manuel de la Rocha , is one of the members of the executive who have remained loyal to Sánchez.

“His position is firm that the socialist party should never facilitate a PP government,” he told The Irish Times following a meeting of loyalists on Thursday.

As for the prospect of forming a leftist government with Podemos and other parties, De la Rocha admitted it was “always difficult and now looks even harder”.

However, the most immediate challenge for Sánchez, the man many blame for Spain’s unprecedented political impasse, is to survive an emergency meeting of the party’s federal committee today. </s> Madrid, Sep 12 (IANS) Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality Carmen Monton on Tuesday resigned after allegations of plagiarism, media reports said.

According to the media reports, Monton had copied 19 of the 52 pages of the investigative work she produced as part of the Masters Degree she obtained from the Department of Law at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) between 2010 and 2011.

These revelations followed a series of articles published in the online newspaper “Diario.es” revealing further irregularities in her Master including having her marks for part of the course changes from “not present” to “pass”, Xinhua reported.

Monton’s resignation came just hours after Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had publicly given her his backing, saying she was “doing a fine job and she is going to continue doing so”.

Monton is not the first politician to be forced to resign over allegations of irregularities of the qualifications they obtained from the University Rey Juan Carlos.

Cristina Cifuentes, of the right wing People’s Party (PP), was forced to resign as the President of the Madrid Autonomous Community in April this year after similar allegations.

Pablo Casado, who was recently elected leader of the PP, also faces accusations of irregularities in the Masters Degree which he also obtained from the same university. </s> MADRID — Spain’s health minister has resigned over irregularities found in her master’s degree, the second cabinet member to be replaced in the just over 100 days since Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez came to power.

Carmen Monton announced her resignation late on Tuesday, a day after news website elDiario.es published irregularities in her 2011 degree on gender studies. Her final work, it later emerged, had chunks of text copied from websites and other works.

Sanchez, who became prime minister in June promising to root out corruption, lost a culture minister over a tax fine. His centre-left government has been marred by erratic policy-making, with several U-turns on cabinet decisions.

The resignation also puts pressure on opposition leader Pablo Casado, whose degree from the same public policy institute as Monton’s is under investigation. </s> Socialist Pedro Sánchez has been sworn in as the new prime minister of Spain, following the ousting of conservative Mariano Rajoy.

He took the oath alongside King Felipe VI in a brief ceremony in Madrid. </s> MADRID (Reuters) - Socialist Pedro Sanchez was sworn in on Saturday as Spain’s seventh head of government since its return to democracy in the late 1970s, taking over from veteran conservative Mariano Rajoy who was ousted on Friday over a corruption scandal.

One of Sanchez’ main challenges will be to try and find a way out of the crisis in the wealthy Catalonia region, where a new nationalist government was due to be sworn in on Saturday.

Sanchez was sworn in as Spanish prime minister before King Felipe, his right hand on the constitution — the first time that was not done with the Bible or a crucifix.

Sanchez became prime minister with only 84 seats for his Socialist Party in the 350-member assembly thanks to support from the hard-left Podemos and smaller nationalist parties.

He said he intends to steer the country through to mid-2020 when the parliamentary term ends.

But his majority - the smallest for a Spanish government since the return to democracy following Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, makes it unclear how long his administration can last. </s> Hopes for an end to Spain’s nine-month political deadlock have risen after the shattered Socialist Workers’ party deposed its leader over his pointblank refusal to allow the acting prime minister to form a government.

Pedro Sanchez, who had fought to retain the leadership of the PSOE since a coup against him erupted this week, stepped down after a long and bitter meeting of the party’s federal executive committee on Saturday.

His plan to hang on to his job by holding a leadership contest in three weeks’ time was eventually rejected by 132 votes to 107 at the end of an 11-hour session that laid bare the chaos and anger at the heart the PSOE.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Sanchez announced his resignation and the party was put in the hands of a caretaker leadership that will have to decide soon on its next step as a deadline looms for avoiding Spain’s third general election in just over a year.

Mr Sanchez had consistently argued that the party would not do anything to support or facilitate the return to government of Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s party, on the grounds that the PP had wrought too much damage on Spanish society and was hopelessly mired in corruption scandals.

It was a stance that infuriated not only many voters - and the media - but also his adversaries within the PSOE who blamed him for the party’s disastrous electoral performance.

“As I said yesterday and as I’m saying again today, my parents taught me that the most important thing is keeping your word,” Mr Sanchez said. “That was my word, which I gave to all the members and to the federal committee, too, when it came to the party’s position on Rajoy’s investiture process.”

On Wednesday, hours before half of the executive committee resigned to try to force Mr Sanchez out, the party’s former leader Felipe Gonzalez accused him of going back on an assurance that he would allow Mr Rajoy to form a minority government following a second inconclusive election in June.

Like many in the party, Mr Gonzalez urged Mr Sanchez to let Mr Rajoy govern. Susana Diaz, the leader of the PSOE in Andalusia and the candidate most frequently touted as Mr Sanchez’s successor, also insisted that the needs of the country had to come before the needs of the party.

The PSOE now has a month to regroup and re-evaluate its position before King Felipe could dissolve parliament and call new elections to be held at Christmas.

Although the removal of Mr Sanchez could help end the political paralysis, his departure is likely to prove a pyrrhic victory for Ms Diaz and her supporters. The civil war that has torn the socialists apart will only serve to strengthen Mr Rajoy’s hand and boost the appeal of Podemos, the anti-austerity party that has long dreamed of replacing the PSOE as the strongest voice of the Spanish left.

Pablo Simon, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said the PSOE had been left “mortally wounded” by the week’s events and in no mood for third elections in which they would suffer even further.

“The Socialist party is so weakened, so destroyed and so ripped apart that all it can do is limp on,” he said. “If it’s going to negotiate, it can only do so with its hands up.”

Reports suggest the PP will ask the socialists for far more than just a smooth investiture. Safe in the knowledge that he could use fresh elections to crush his party’s longstanding rivals, Mr Rajoy is likely to extract the maximum possible gains from any deal.

“His conditions are going to be very harsh,” said Mr Simon. “It seems he’s going to look for their support to make sure he has four easy years in office.”

He predicted those who had helped oust Mr Sanchez were unlikely to find their efforts rewarded. “There’s a whole generation of socialist leaders who have damaged themselves with this move: Susana Diaz, Guillermo Fernandez Vara [the PSOE president of Extremadura] and Eduardo Madina [a former leadership candidate] are all divisive figures within the party now,” he said.

“Whoever leads the party into the next phase needs to be someone completely new and unstained by the conspiracy.”

Mr Simon said Mr Sanchez’s replacement faced an almost insurmountable task. “The wound the PSOE has sustained is going to be very hard to cure and will need many electoral cycles to heal. I get the feeling that we’re heading for a long cycle of government by the right in Spain. ” </s> MADRID (AP) — Former Spanish prime minister and veteran politician Mariano Rajoy is vowing loyalty to his Popular Party in an emotional farewell, as the party's leadership transitions in a bid to retake power in Spain.

The 63-year-old lost a parliamentary vote last month to his socialist opponent, Pedro Sanchez, in the wake of graft convictions for members of his center-right party.

Now in the opposition, members of PP began Friday a two-day congress to choose between Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, 47, who was deputy prime minister until June, and Pablo Casado, 37, a lawyer and rising party figure.

The winner faces the challenges of reuniting a party split by a bitter leadership battle and rebuilding its reputation as new parties, both left and right, have ended the traditional bipartisan politics.
The leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Pedro Sánchez, resigns.