Spain's voters are angry, but their ballots don't move

Discontent piles up, but the vote doesn't move

A list of grievances running to seventeen points. Corruption in face mask contracts and Plus Ultra, the amnesty for the separatists, the delays in aid for the victims of the La Palma volcano and the DANA floods, the price of housing, squatting, migration in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. All of that fits into a single message. And the conclusion drawn is the one that gives this conversation its title: even so, some people keep voting for them.

The starting point is a paradox that political economy has been trying to explain for decades. The electorate punishes with its voting intention what it perceives as a management disaster, but not always. The question hanging in the air is why a voter who suffers from a lack of investment, tax pressure and ever more expensive housing keeps their ballot intact.

The diagnosis of misgovernment and the bill nobody pays

The initial inventory is not a list of opinions: it is a catalogue of public policies with a cost. The amnesty for those prosecuted over the procés, the passage of the law that accompanies it, the attacks on the judiciary as an institution. Add to that bureaucratic clientelism and nepotism, which in economic terms translate into procurement overruns and a loss of efficiency in public spending.

The most repeated criticism points to a pattern: a government that spends a lot and collects even more, but whose investment never arrives. The delays in aid for the victims of the La Palma volcano, the DANA floods and the wildfires are the most tangible example. It is not an ideological matter: it is a matter of deadlines and budget execution.

Why doesn't the socialist voter change their ballot?

The answer that dominates the conversation is that of the captive vote. Some argue that part of the electorate would vote for the PSOE (Spain's Socialist Party) even if corruption cases multiplied, because the vote does not respond to a cost-benefit calculation but to an identity. The most pessimistic reading assumes that this core is irreducible; the most optimistic believes the erosion is already under way and that the search for votes beyond Spain's borders —the regularization drive and the so-called grandchildren law— is the sign that the domestic base is running dry.

Against this weighs another argument: the absence of an alternative seen as viable. The question "is anyone better?" sums up that trap. When the adversary does not inspire confidence, the vote stays where it is by default, not by conviction.

Immigration as an economic variable, not just an electoral one

The initial message includes the pull effect, aid to migrants and the pressure on the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. In economic terms, the phenomenon translates into strain on public services and housing in territories with ageing populations. The discussion drifts towards the suspicion of an electoral calculation: winning foreign votes inside and outside Spain.

The issue becomes entangled with feminism and family policy, two fronts the original text presents as grievances. And with the episode of the nationwide power cut, which adds the energy dimension to the list.

The point where the analysis gets stuck

The conversation ends without resolving the essential question. If discontent is so broad and so well documented, why does it not translate into vote switching? The sheeple hypothesis explains little. The identity-vote hypothesis explains more, but not everything. And the "they're all the same" argument —which runs through the whole debate— turns criticism into abstention, not change. That is where things stand: an electorate that complains and a ballot box that doesn't move.