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<\/a>Last week I found myself lecturing a group of over 100 Executive MBA students from Kenya and Nigeria on globalization and they were very interested in the political stalemate here in Spain.<\/p>\nA new political paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\n The short story is that the political future\u00a0of a country, like a company’s business strategy, has much to do with its past and in this Spain is no exception.<\/p>\n Since the restoration of Democracy in Spain the two major political parties have dominated public life at the national level. The one on the left, the Socialist Party has been associated with the Republican side which lost the the country’s civil war and the one on the right, the Popular Party is in many ways the heir of the former regime.<\/p>\n Up until this point the two major parties had, at times, needed to make concessions\u00a0to regional parties in Catalunya, the canary Islands or the Basque country, but the results of December, 2015 were the first time a real coalition would be needed.<\/p>\n The problem is that these four political parties and their leaders have little in common and in some cases feel deep animosity for on another.<\/p>\n For the leader of the Popular Party, who won the most seats in December and again in the second vote in June 2016, the whole situation is surprising as he feels deeply that his administration has done a terrific job in cleaning up the mess made by his predecessor and he should therefore continue on the current path.<\/p>\n For the former leader of the socialist party, who resigned yesterday, the issue is that the governing party is deeply corrupt, has their former treasurer still in jail and a number of high level party members under indictment. His view is that the actual president of the country is clearly implicated in the scandals and he has categorically\u00a0refused to allow him to govern.<\/p>\n For the new party on the left, the logical thing to do is to form an alliance which would reject what it sees as the failed neo-liberal policies of the current government and bring a new phase of people power to Spain echoing some of the strains from the greek party Syriza.<\/p>\n The new party on the right was willing to work with the Socialists in a coalition which would adopt\u00a0a fiscally conservative but socially liberal program based on ethical government but would, under no circumstances have anything to do with the new leftists who for their part have been equally skeptical of the new right.<\/p>\n<\/a>What happened almost one year ago, on December 20th, is that Spanish voters gave a significant number of seats to two relatively new political parties, the right leaning Citizens Party and the leftist Podemos or “we can” party breaking the model that has been in place since 1977.<\/p>\n<\/a>