Four defections could topple the Spanish government, debate suggests

Four defections and the Congress map

How many PSOE MPs would be needed to end the current government? The arithmetic circulating in the debate is simple yet uncomfortable: four. With that number, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s investiture would shift from impossible to probable, and Pedro Sánchez would lose the votes required to remain in La Moncloa. The problem is not the math, but everything else.

The original thread serves as a rallying cry: let the right govern and send the parties supporting the executive "to hell." From there, the conversation splits. Some celebrate the move as a clean exit. Most, however, dismantle it with a simple argument: four defections do not change a government, they change a vote.

What happens the day after investiture

The most repeated objection stems from pure parliamentary mechanics. Suppose four PSOE MPs break voting discipline and allow Feijóo to be invested. Fine. But the next day, what happens? Every law the new government wants to pass will again need those four votes, or four others. The question hovering over the thread is whether those MPs would join the Mixed Group, whether the PSOE would replace them, or if Sánchez would appeal to the Constitutional Court or Strasbourg to reverse the situation. Nobody knows. And that void is precisely the flaw in the initial thesis.

Some go further, arguing that voting discipline within the PSOE is stricter than ever. The prior selection of candidates, it is argued, makes it nearly impossible for anyone to break the script. "Electoral lists of any party are thoroughly vetted to prevent such eventualities," summarizes a highlighted post. The implicit conclusion: the defector exists in theory, not in practice.

Defection as betrayal, not heroism

Against the epic reading—four brave souls saving Spain—appears another much less friendly one. A PSOE MP from Madrid was voted in by Madrilenians to defend Madrid’s interests. If he votes in favor of privileging Catalonia with hundreds of millions, amnesties, or self-determination, is he betraying his voters or trinc his conscience? The Constitution, it is recalled in the debate, prohibits the imperative mandate: the MP represents the entire nation, not his party leader. That legal detail turns defection into a double-edged sword.

The discussion then shifts to the price. What would it take for four MPs to break discipline? The most cynical answer in the thread: making them millionaires. Only thus, one post argues, could one expect someone to break voting discipline. The buying of wills, it adds, is not new: it is part of Spanish political history, said with the same naturalness as discussing an amnesty.

The unclosed calculation: 800,000 fewer votes

Here the debate leaves hypothesis and enters the numbers. The sum of right-wing votes in 2011, led by Mariano Rajoy, was 12,009,791. In 2023, with Feijóo at the helm, it fell to 11,177,348. That is nearly 800,000 fewer votes. Meanwhile, Sánchez would have gained a million votes compared to 2019. The conclusion drawn by part of the thread is uncomfortable for the People’s Party (PP): the problem is not the system, but the candidate.

The response from the other side is that a million right-wing voters voted against Feijóo, and those votes count double: one less for the PP and one more for the PSOE. The arithmetic thus becomes a battleground. In the middle, the suspicion that the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV)—five MPs, it is recalled—may be negotiating quietly with the government without it becoming public. "There has been much silence regarding those contacts," points out a highlighted post. On Tuesday, we will see.

The PP is not spared either

Criticism is not limited to the PSOE. Several posts target Feijóo himself: for distributing ministries before the elections, for not attending televised debates, and for seeking defections after losing. The comparison with Rajoy is recurrent. And the call for a change in leadership—Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s name surfaces in the thread—appears as an underlying current that fails to materialize.

The dominant feeling, however, is that the PP and the PSOE are "the same" in essence. One post summarizes it with a concrete example: the PP has a majority in the Senate to remove the "pinganillos" (small political favors) and does not do so. If there is no difference in the small things, it is argued, there will be none in the large ones. Abstention, blank votes, or "let’s repeat the elections" appear as repeated exits throughout the conversation.

The question no one answers

And if in the end there is no investiture and elections are repeated? The most repeated answer is that the PSOE would win again. Or that the PP would win, it does not matter: "PPSOE will win, whether you like it or not." The sense of a loop is so strong that some posts drift toward much more extreme scenarios, from armed intervention to partitioning the territory into two Spains. They are the exception, but they set the underlying tone: distrust that the system will produce a different result.

With four defections, the government changes. Without them, it does not. And with them, it is unclear whether it would hold. The only certainty left by the debate is that no one has yet found a way for arithmetic and politics to align at the same time.