The agreement between the Popular Party and Vox to run a coordinated campaign for the Senate in the 29 November elections offers a preview of some of the difficulties that forming the next Spanish government could pose. It is not just an electoral maneuver to maximize the two parties’ parliamentary representation. It is also a precedent of cooperation that can be carried over into negotiations for an investiture vote. The central question of this election may turn out to be less who wins the most votes than who can assemble a parliamentary majority, and on what political terms.
There is an increasingly likely scenario, even if not every poll draws it: the Socialist Party (PSOE) finishes as the leading force but lacks a majority sufficient to govern, while the Popular Party (PP), with fewer votes and fewer deputies than in 2023, manages to form a government thanks to Vox’s growth. Alberto Núñez Feijóo won 137 seats and 33.1 percent of the vote back then, a result that did not allow him to lead the government. Now the reverse could happen: a worse electoral result and, even so, arrival at the Moncloa. There would be nothing contradictory in this with the way our parliamentary system works, in which whoever commands the confidence of Parliament governs.
A Feijóo premiership with fewer deputies than in 2023 and a strengthened Vox would mean a leader whose political autonomy is constrained from day one. The PP might hold the head of government, but the balance of power within the majority would increasingly depend on Santiago Abascal. Vox would be able to shape budgets, legislative reforms and a good part of the executive’s strategic decisions. The prime minister’s weakness would stem not only from the Socialist opposition but from his own parliamentary majority, a circumstance that could turn every negotiation with Vox into a debate over the real limits of the head of government’s power.
This dependence would have consequences for the content of public policy. In recent years the PP has gradually absorbed part of Vox’s language and priorities on issues such as gender equality policies, euthanasia and certain aspects of the pension system, even though the two parties’ positions are not identical. Immigration is perhaps the most revealing example. José María Aznar’s governments launched several extraordinary regularization processes for immigrants, and during Mariano Rajoy’s term ordinary regularization mechanisms remained in place. Today, however, the PP is among the main opponents of the extraordinary regularization promoted by Pedro Sánchez’s government.
The contrast is significant because it reflects how much the political framework of the immigration debate has changed. A measure that under Aznar could be presented as a pragmatic response to the realities of the labor market is now read through concepts such as the pull effect, pressure on public services or security. Competition with Vox has helped shift the debate away from integrating a population that already lives and works in Spain and toward the need to show firmness on irregular immigration.
Dick Morris, an adviser to Bill Clinton, popularized the concept of triangulation in the 1990s to describe a strategy in which a leader adopts positions held by his opponents in order to broaden his electoral base. Although Clinton’s original triangulation aimed at building a position distinct from both Democrats and Republicans, some of the behavior of European conservative parties recalls that logic of appropriating a rival’s proposals. The difference is that, in dealing with the radical right, this strategy can end up producing the opposite result: legitimizing its priorities without reducing its electoral strength. When the time comes to negotiate a government, the conservative party discovers that it needs an ally whose ideas it helped normalize.
A PP-Vox government could also introduce a little-explored institutional tension: the relationship with the monarchy. A Cluster17 poll for Agenda Pública, published in August 2026, reveals a significant contradiction among Abascal’s voters. While 85.7 percent favor keeping the monarchy, only 39.9 percent view Felipe VI’s performance positively and 54.3 percent view it negatively. By contrast, 84.5 percent of PP voters and 63.3 percent of Socialist voters approve of the monarch’s conduct. The distance between the two right-wing electorates is revealing: they share a preference for the monarchy but hold very different views of the person who currently embodies the institution.
The contradiction is starker still when one considers that 63.7 percent of Vox voters would like a Crown with more political power. This combination of institutional monarchism and distrust of Felipe VI could become relevant if Vox entered the government or became its main parliamentary support. Feijóo would have to manage a majority in which a pro-king PP would coexist with an ally whose electorate mostly disputes the king’s performance. This does not mean a crisis between the executive and the head of state would be inevitable, but it would be a potential source of friction in an institution whose stability depends, among other things, on staying outside party competition.
Feijóo’s electoral weakness could also have consequences within his own party. Reaching the Moncloa does not necessarily close the leadership debates, especially when it follows an electoral setback. A PP with fewer deputies and fewer votes than in 2023 might interpret Feijóo’s presidency as the product of a favorable parliamentary combination rather than as confirmation of his ability to widen the party’s electoral space. Under these conditions, the debate over his succession could open much earlier than usual, even in the first months of government. Regional leaders and the PP’s various factions would have an incentive to ask who would be best placed to win back the votes lost to Vox.
The result would be a presidency under two simultaneous pressures: that of a strengthened parliamentary ally and that of a party that might begin preparing its future leadership while still in government. Feijóo would have to negotiate outward to keep his majority and inward to preserve his authority. This double dependence could constrain his ability to develop an agenda of his own and favor a politics increasingly geared toward managing internal balances rather than promoting far-reaching reforms.
The consequences of this scenario would not stop at Spain’s borders. A PP-Vox government could also change the incentives of the Spanish Socialists in the European Parliament. The PSOE is one of the main delegations of the European social-democratic family and has been an important player in sustaining the majorities that back Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission. But it would become politically harder to maintain stable cooperation with the European People’s Party in Brussels while the PP governs Spain thanks to Vox. The Spanish Socialists might harden their conditions for supporting Commission initiatives or withdraw their backing from certain majorities, complicating a European governability that already rests on increasingly fragile balances.
At the same time, a victory for the Spanish right would have implications for the whole European political map. Giorgia Meloni has built much of her international influence by combining a nationalist political identity with pragmatic action in the EU institutions. But this combination also depends on the context in which she operates. A PP-Vox government in Spain, a possible victory for Marine Le Pen’s camp in France and a German CDU under growing pressure from the AfD could give Meloni new incentives to sharpen the positions closest to the radical right. The need to present herself as a moderate interlocutor before the main European capitals would diminish if those capitals were governed by ideologically closer forces.
The Senate agreement thus takes on a dimension that goes beyond the arithmetic of the upper house. It anticipates a possible transformation of the Spanish right and of its relationship with power. The paradox of the coming election may be that Feijóo finally gets what he failed to achieve in 2023, but under conditions that deeply limit his authority: a prime minister with less electoral support, dependent on a strengthened Vox, subject to tensions within his own party and forced to manage possible institutional conflicts. And a Spain whose new parliamentary majority could help shift Europe’s political center of gravity as well. Feijóo might reach the Moncloa without having truly won the battle for leadership of the right.
