Spain’s King Felipe VI has made a last ditch effort to convince the country’s political party leaders to form a coalition government.
The king, now in his third round of talks, will finish his negotiations on Tuesday at a final meeting with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Spain’s elections last December proved inconclusive for a majority government and the four leading parties have so far failed to agree any type of coalition arrangement that would have command a majority of seats.
The election result plunged Spain into uncharted waters as the country has never had a coalition government since it returned to democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
If this final round of talks fails to reach a conclusion by 2 May, the king will have to dissolve parliament and call a second general election for 26 June.
Voters in December shied away from the governing Popular Party as well as the Socialists. Corruption scandals have attached themselves deeply to both. Fed up with austerity measures and shockingly high unemployment, some people turned to the two newcomers, left-leaning Podemos and centre-right Ciudadanos.
A fresh election might usefully break the deadlock. Opinion polls, however, suggest the results are likely to mirror those of December with no single party obtaining a majority, although Podemos could lose votes as some of the five million people who backed it last time accuse it of blocking the formation of a left-wing government that would have ousted the conservatives, in power since 2011.
Podemos could yet hook up with smaller centre-left parties such as Izquierda Unida, a communist-green party which received 800,000 votes in December.
Analysts say that the Popular Party and Ciudadanos form a centre-right and the Socialists and Podemos together with smaller parties create a centre-left. In a new election, much depends on the voting within the two spheres.
