Mariano Rajoy’s controversial and scandal-mired tenure as Spanish prime minister seemed all but certain to be entering its final hours on Thursday afternoon when a small Basque party threw its weight behind a no-confidence motion tabled after Rajoy’s party was found to have profited from a huge corruption racket.
After hours of suspense, the Basque Nationalist party (PNV) revealed it had decided to back the motion proposed by the opposition socialist party, PSOE, delivering the handful of votes required to oust Rajoy of the People’s party (PP) and replace him with the PSOE leader, Pedro Sánchez.
The PNV’s five votes – together with the support of groupings including the anti-austerity Podemos party, the two Catalan pro-independence parties and another Basque party – gave the PSOE 180 votes in Spain’s 350-seat congress, four more than were needed.
Good riddance - corrupt governments should be rolled. And there's a delightful justice in the Basques and Catalans being key to that. While the support of the Catalan parties was gained with a promise of dialogue on independence, even if it changes nothing rolling Rajoy would still be worthwhile purely as an act of political revenge against the Prime Minister who pushed for the beatings of 1 October and the subsequent imposition of colonial rule.