With the help of a friendly spaniard from VisualPolitik, this video is going to explain the Spanish government crisis and elections. The country of Spain is in crisis, not just economically, but its very democracy. Its system of government is in paralysis. Most people are aware that the 2008 global crash was devastating to the Spanish economy. In quarter one of 2013, there was an unemployment rate of 26.94 percent. For perspective during the Great Depression in America, the peak of unemployment was 25 percent. Particularly affected are young workers, whose rate of unemployment sits at around 45 percent. This, despite the fact that the current generation of young spaniards is the most educated generation in Spanish history. This means more young spaniards are leaving the country in search of work, and many of those who do stay are unemployed or under-employed. The Spanish political system is still young. Its constitution was only ratified in 1978, after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco. Spain is a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature known as the Cortés Henarales. The king acts mostly as a figurehead as in the United Kingdom. More on the monarchy in a bit, key legislative power lies in the congress of de Deputados, which functions like a parliament. Elected in a proportional manner through general elections in each of the 50 provinces of Spain. Like most democracies, it's not a flawless system. The president, who acts more like a prime minister, is known as the president de el cobiérano, and is chosen by a majority vote in the congress of de Deputados. The current prime minister of Spain, Mariano Rojoin, of Spain's popular party is barely holding on to power. His years in office since being elected in 2011 have been a mess of bailouts, corruption, and stagnant economic indicators. So let's go deeper with this topic. To explain just how crazy things got under Rojoin, here's one of the hosts from Visual Polytique, Fonseca. He and his team post videos about Spanish politics and world events every single week, so if you speak Spanish, you should definitely subscribe. In Spain, we all remember what happened during the weekend where the Spanish economy was at the age of collapse. The president and his ministers were gathering in Brussels for a meeting with the European officials trying to avoid a bailout from the European Central Bank. The same day, our king broke his leg while he was hunting elephants on a safari, escorted by an absolutely unknown smoking hot blonde. At the same time, the minister of labor was playing Candy Crush while holding the meeting, and we learned that because she tweeted from her official account that she just scored 10,000 points. Plus, we have a rampant corruption that goes from monarchy to all the political parties, including the Spanish people's party, aka Partida Popular. There is that general sense of impunity when we see famous journalists being fired from their newspapers when they are starting to investigate a corrupted politician. On the top of it, we have Catalonia. Catalonia, the second wealthiest region in Spain, is running a referendum of self-determination. Unlike UK, the Spanish constitution doesn't contemplate such an affair. And the president, Mariana Racheu, has rejected several times to meet the Catalonian politicians. Don't forget that the national integrity is one of the key foundations of the Spanish conservative platform. Mariana Racheu came to power under the promise of low taxes and business friendly policies. Nonetheless, just one week after he took office, his first announcement was the biggest fiscal increase in the history of all our democracy. Since then, there is no tax that has not been dramatically increased, including the creation of new special tributes to industries like green energy, for instance. That's why, despite having a conservative administration, Spain has dropped in all the rankings regarding economic freedom or easiness of doing business. Alavot Fonseca said, led up to a wild situation for the 2015 general election. The people were sick of the two major parties which had governed since the early days of Spanish democracy in the 80s. There were two new independent parties that competed for control of the Spanish Congresso de Diputados, the anti-Austerity Podemos, United Weekana, and the centrests, Ciudadanos, meaning citizens. Interestingly, unlike the right-wing populist insurgents of UKIP and the UK, Front National and France, Golden Dawn and Greece, or AFD in Germany, the big new political movement of Spain was really coming from the center and the left. So who were the people behind Ciudadanos and Podemos? Here's Fonseca. Didadanos emerged 10 years ago as a center left-wing political platform against Catalonian nationalism. Now, they've become a nationwide liberal party. When it comes to social issues, they have kind of a left-leaning position, but they embrace free market and low taxes. Podemos, on the other hand, was founded in 2014 by former members of the Spanish Communist Party. Their super-duper charismatic leader, Pablo Iglesias, used to be a political mastermind for the former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. With an anti-Austerity agenda and the best political campaign I have ever seen in my entire life, Podemos have become from zero to hero in a matter of months, and now they have serious chances to take office. P.P and PSOE kept the biggest share of the votes, but they still nothing but the shadow of what they used to be, and none of them got enough seats as to form a government by themselves. After the voting had been counted, the results were clearly historic. Rejoys P.P had the most votes, 28.7%, down 16.3% since the last time. It was significantly lower than in 2011. PSOE, the socialists, lost representation as well, with 22% a decrease of 6.8% since the last elections. The real winners were the insurgent parties. Podemos and Ciudadanos had 120.7% and 13.9% respectively. Clearly, no one party would have a majority in the Congress of the Diputados, which meant two or more of the parties would need to form a coalition in order to elect a prime minister. The difficult negotiations to form a government began. Basically, there were just two possible coalitions. The first one would be a marriage between the populares and the socialistas, but Spain is too much polarized as to put together socialists and conservatives. The other alternative would be a left-leaming government with Podemos and the Socialists together, supported by all the regionalist parties, including the Catalonian Independents. Nonetheless, the conditions set by Podemos were seen as raconian by the Socialists. The intransigence of the parties meant that the Congress of the Diputados would not be able to form a government and was completely dissolved on May the 3rd. New elections would be held in June of 2016. This is an existential crisis for Spain. After the longest dictatorship in the history of Europe under Francisco Franco, the return of the king and the return of a representative democracy was a positive move for this beautiful country. I lived in Spain for the last two years, and I feel very strongly that the people there deserve better than the corruption and the stagnation that they've been subjected to. To follow the elections in Spain and to get other world news, be sure to go subscribe to VisualPolitik. I've left some of their best videos in the description and in the comments. If you want to learn more about the Spanish and European politics or you just want to improve your Spanish, don't forget to check out our channel. We publish a brand new video every Monday and Thursday. I hope to see you guys as tabista. Now if you'd like to hear me explain the American primaries in Spanish with a really sad accent, go ahead and click this video here to watch over on VisualPolitik. Later, guys.