Spanish lawmakers on Wednesday reaffirmed their confidence in Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as they voted down a no-confidence motion brought by the anti-austerity Podemos party.

MADRID: Spanish lawmakers on Wednesday voted down a no-confidence motion in Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy brought by the anti-austerity Podemos party.

The motion had not been expected to garner the majority of votes needed to oust Rajoy given the Socialists had said they would abstain and the liberal Ciudadanos and other smaller regional parties had said they would vote against the proposal.

But the move from Podemos was primarily aimed at portraying the party as leader of the opposition to the centre-right government at a time when the Socialists have just picked a new leader and are struggling with falling support, analysts say.

"We are on the right track to build up an alternative majority," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said after the vote.

"Today, we are one step closer to removing the People's Party from the institutions."

The motion was rejected with 170 votes against, 82 votes for and 97 abstentions, roughly in line with the breakdown when Rajoy was voted in as prime minister last year, showing there has been no change in the balance of power in parliament.

Rajoy, who has secured support for the budget and obtained as a result at least two years of stability, said he was satisfied with the outcome of the vote.

"It has been rejected by a wide majority and this means we will be able to keep working," he told journalists. </s> MADRID, May 25 (Reuters) - Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would not call a snap election after two parties threatened to bring down the government over a graft trial involving members of his party in which a judge questioned the credibility of his testimony.

Rajoy said Spain needed political stability in order to keep on track the strong economic recovery it is currently enjoying and he would serve his four-year term.

"The no-confidence motion goes against the political stability that our country needs and it goes against the economic recovery. It is bad for Spain," Rajoy told a news conference. (Reporting by Julien Toyer Editing by Jesus Aguado) </s> MADRID, May 25 (Reuters) - Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would not call a snap election after two parties threatened to bring down the government over a graft trial involving members of his party in which a judge questioned the credibility of his testimony.

Rajoy said Spain needed political stability in order to keep on track the strong economic recovery it is currently enjoying and he would serve his four-year term.

“The no-confidence motion goes against the political stability that our country needs and it goes against the economic recovery. It is bad for Spain,” Rajoy told a news conference. (Reporting by Julien Toyer Editing by Jesus Aguado) </s> A motion of no confidence has been passed in Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy following a corruption scandal.

It passed by 180 votes to 169 with one abstention.

He is the first Spanish prime minister to lose such a vote since Spain transitioned to democracy in 1977.

Deputies were asked individually in the lower house of parliament, the Congress of Deputies, whether or not they supported the motion on Friday morning.

This was done in an individual roll-call of deputies.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, bottom right, waves as members of his party applaud him during the second day of a motion of no confidence session at the Spanish parliament in Madrid | Image: Francisco Seco/AP/Press Association Images

This means Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the opposition PSOE party, is the new prime minister.

Mr Sanchez (46) is expected to take office by Monday, after King Felipe VI swears him in.

He is also expected to appoint his cabinet next week.

Mr Sanchez has already committed to respecting a budget passed by Mr Rajoy.

He has also promised to start talks with the Catalans over their bid for independence, but said he will not give them another referendum.

His party has a narrow majority in the 350-seat lower house.

Pedro Sánchez smiles at the start of the second day of a motion of no confidence session at the Spanish parliament in Madrid | Image: Francisco Seco/AP/Press Association Images

Mr Rajoy told the Spanish parliament he was proud of his record.

"It has been an honour to leave Spain better than I found it. Thank you to all Spaniards and good luck," he said.

The vote of no-confidence came after 29 former members of his conservative Popular Party were convicted of corruption last week.

The Spanish National Court found bribes were offered to former officials in exchange for public contracts.

The party also received a fine as a beneficiary of the kickbacks-for-contracts scheme. </s> MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Ciudadanos party on Friday said it was ready to put forward its own motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over a graft case involving members of his People’s Party.

“If Rajoy does not call snap elections we would be ready to put forward (our own) motion of no confidence in order to hold elections,” Jose Manuel Villegas a senior member of the pro-business Ciudadanos said during a press conference.

The opposition Socialists have put forward their own motion of no confidence. </s> Spain's former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Tuesday announced he was resigning as leader of the conservative People's Party (PP) after losing power in a no-confidence vote.

MADRID: Spain's former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Tuesday announced he was resigning as leader of the conservative People's Party (PP) after losing power in a no-confidence vote.

"It's best for me, for the party, and it's best for Spain," Rajoy said to a standing ovation from party members.

The Socialists replaced the PP as the country's leaders on Friday after parliament passed a no-confidence motion against Rajoy over a slew of corruption cases.

Rajoy had already been under fire for his handling of a secession crisis in Catalonia, with many voters turning away from his PP to the centre-right Ciudadanos.

"He is doing the best thing for his party," Teneo Intelligence analyst Antonio Barroso said. "It will open a renewal process inside the PP. It was the only party that had not renewed its leadership over the past years and it was dragging it down."

Rajoy will still function as head of the party until a party congress agrees on his successor.

Twenty-nine people related to the PP, including a former treasurer and other senior members, were convicted in May of offences including falsifying accounts.

Rajoy became the first sitting prime minister in Spain to give evidence in a trial when he was called as a witness in the case last year, prompting calls for him to resign. He has denied any wrongdoing.

In his ruling, the judge said there was evidence the party ran a slush fund for many years and that the credibility of Rajoy's testimony denying it "should be questioned". </s> MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s hours in office appeared numbered on Thursday after reports that a Basque political party would back a no-confidence vote over a corruption case, paving the way for Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez to take power.

Cadena Ser radio and La Sexta television reported on Thursday that the Basque Nationalist Party would vote against Rajoy, giving his opponents enough votes to unseat him.

Sanchez appeared to have secured 180 votes to become prime minister, more than the absolute majority of 176 votes he would need to take power immediately if the no-confidence vote is held on Friday as scheduled. Rajoy could potentially slow the transition if he were to resign before the vote.

Rajoy’s departure would trigger a second political crisis in southern Europe, further unnerving financial markets already wrongfooted by failed attempts to form a government in Italy three months after a national election.

With most Spanish parties in favor of respecting EU fiscal rules however, it is highly unlikely that a new government would follow Italy in questioning the euro single currency.

News of Rajoy's likely downfall sent Spain's blue-chip index Ibex .IBEX down 0.72 percent at 1405 GMT, erasing a 0.9 percent gain earlier in the day, but did not trigger any immediate sell-off.

Resigning before the vote takes place on Friday would spare Rajoy the humiliation of becoming the first Spanish Prime Minister to lose a no-confidence vote. He did not attend the afternoon session of the debate on Thursday.

If he resigns, the government of his People’s Party would go into caretaker mode until a new prime minister is sworn in, which could take several weeks or months. If the vote goes ahead and Rajoy loses, Sanchez would immediately replace him.

“Are you ready to resign? Resign today and leave by your own will,” Sanchez told Rajoy. “You are part of the past, of a chapter the country is about to close,” he also said.

The Basque PNV party backed Rajoy’s budget as recently as last week but it decided to remove its support after dozens of people linked to the ruling People’s Party (PP) were sentenced to decades in prison in a long-running corruption trial.

Sanchez said he would stick to the budget approved by Rajoy if he won and would also seek to start a new dialogue with the restive region of Catalonia.

Defending his record on Thursday, Rajoy told deputies his centre-right PP has a wide majority of members who are “decent and honest”.

“The Socialists have left us with a ruined country and we brought back growth and jobs,” he said, adding that Sanchez was trying to put together a “Frankenstein” government that would damage the economy.

Two Catalan pro-independence parties as well as leftist Podemos, a relative newcomer, another small Basque group and a party from the Canary Islands have said they will back Sanchez.

Jose Luis Abalos, the member of parliament in charge of formally presenting the motion on behalf of the Socialists, told PP deputies that the court ruling had triggered a wave of indignation across the country.

“While families were suffering the crisis, you were becoming millionaires,” he told PP members in parliament.

Rajoy, whose minority government has struggled after two inconclusive elections in 2015 and 2016 ushered in the most fragmented parliament since democracy returned to Spain in the 1970s, is also coming under fire for a perceived inability to solve a secession crisis in Catalonia. </s> UNDER FIRE: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (inset) is under pressure after the Gurtel ruling

THE centrist Ciudadanos party has demanded that Mariano Rajoy’s government hold national elections early as the Prime Minister faced the introduction of a no confidence motion today.

The call comes as the main opposition party, the left-leaning Partido Socialista (PSOE), said they had presented the motion in the Spanish parliament following a meeting this morning. Senior party members were discussing how to go forward in the wake of the Gurtel corruption scandal.

The probe saw Rajoy’s ruling conservative Partido Popular (PP) slapped with a more than €245,000 fine after Spain’s High Court ruled it profited from contract kickbacks between 1999 and 2006.

Rajoy said in a television interview yesterday that any case of corruption is “regrettable” and that understanding and dialogue would be needed going forward.

He said today the motion was bad for all Spaniards and that it would harm the country's economy, with it coming soon after the passage of the national budget.

"The motion is for the sole interest of Mr Sanchez and his place in Spanish politics. It is for him to become the leader of the govenment at the price of anyone and anything," he said.

Albert Rivera, the leader of Ciudadanos, wrote on Twitter his party supported a “democratic solution” which would come either from elections or a motion of censure (no confidence).

“We need a clean and strong government. The future is decided by the Spaniards,” he said.

Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the PSOE, said earlier today he had given the order for his party to lodge the motion in the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament.

The PSOE’s version of the motion puts forward Sanchez as a candidate for the premiership, which would see him unseat Rajoy if it is passed by a majority of lawmakers.

The party reportedly has the support of the far-left Podemos party, who issued their own call for a motion of no confidence earlier this week.

Ciudadanos, who currently backs the minority PP government on key votes in Parliament, have ruled out supporting the PSOE's motion. Their backing is a deciding factor in tipping the balance in favour of it passing.

The party's General Secretary Jose Manuel Villegas said his party had instead demanded Roajoy call early elections.

Under the Spanish Constitution’s Article 115 this would be impossible if a motion of no confidence were active. </s> Spain’s parliament on Friday ousted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote sparked by fury over his party’s corruption woes, with his Socialist arch-rival Pedro Sanchez automatically taking over.

An absolute majority of 180 lawmakers voted for the motion to loud applause and shouts of “Yes we can,” converting Rajoy into the first prime minister to be ousted by such a vote since Spain transitioned to democracy in 1977.

The bespectacled 63-year-old leader got up and shook hands with Sanchez before leaving the lower house without a word.

Rajoy had already admitted defeat minutes before the vote, knowing that an absolute majority of lawmakers as diverse as Catalan separatists and Basque nationalists had pledged their support for the no-confidence motion.

“It’s been an honour — there is none bigger — to have been Spain’s prime minister,” he told parliament, with lawmakers from his conservative Popular Party (PP) giving him a standing ovation.

Sanchez, Spain’s 46-year-old opposition leader, had instigated the no-confidence motion last week after a court revealed details of a vast system of bribes given to former PP officials in exchange for lucrative public contracts between 1999-2005.

After years of anger over the scandals tainting the PP, corruption finally got the better of the party and sealed Rajoy’s downfall.

“Today we are signing a new page in the history of democracy in our country,” Sanchez told parliament prior to the vote.

But PP lawmaker Rafael Hernando told him he would be entering the prime minister’s office “through the back door” after failing to win 2015 and 2016 general elections.

“For the first time we may get a prime minister who didn’t win elections,” he retorted.

In order to push through the no-confidence motion, the Socialists, who hold just 84 of the parliament’s 350 seats, had to cosy up to parties they had previously clashed with, like Catalan separatists and the anti-establishment Podemos.

As such, even if he has pledged to govern long enough to restore “institutional stability” before calling early elections, Sanchez‘s new government will likely be highly unstable.

Podemos has already asked to be part of his new government.

Aitor Esteban of the Basque PNV nationalist party, whose support proved decisive for the motion’s success, on Thursday warned that such a minority government would be “weak and difficult, complicated.”

“This is going to be a constant bing, bang, boom.”

Although Rajoy survived a similar no-confidence vote last year, Friday’s ballot draws a line under his rollercoaster time in office which began in 2011 and saw him implementing drastic spending cuts before winning re-election in 2015 and 2016.

Despite winning the last two votes, he lacked the absolute majority of his first term.

He put Spain back onto the path of growth after a devastating economic crisis although unemployment remains sky-high, jobs precarious and many complain inequalities have risen.

But his term in office was also marred by a series of corruption scandals involving former PP members.

Last week the National Court, which deals with major criminal cases, sentenced 29 people with links to the PP, including a former treasurer, to a total of 351 years in jail.

It also ordered the party to pay back 245,000 euros ($290,000) received from the scheme to help finance election campaigns.

Rajoy became Spain’s first sitting prime minister to give evidence at trial when he was called as a witness last year.

In its ruling, the court said the credibility of Rajoy’s testimony “should be questioned”.

During Thursday’s pre-vote debate, Rajoy said the corruption case “does not concern members of the government” and repeated the party’s argument that only a tiny number of its politicians have been tainted by corruption.

He also hit back by listing the many graft cases involving the Socialists over the years.

“Are you Mother Teresa of Calcutta? With what moral authority do you speak?” he told Sanchez.
Rajoy reaffirms that he will not resign, nor call elections and that the motion of no confidence is bad for the stability of the country.