On Thursday, November 16, 2023, the incumbent Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) was re-elected as Spanish Prime Minister with 179 out of 350 votes. In addition to the support of the socialist party PSOE (121 mandates), he counted on the votes of the left-wing populist electoral platform Sumar (31 mandates); the Catalan republican separatist party ERC (7 mandates); the ethnic-nationalist separatist party Junts per Catalunya (JxC, 7 mandates); the left-wing extremist Basque EH Bildu (a successor organization of the political arm of the former terrorist group ETA called "Batasuna"; 6 mandates); the Basque nationalists PNV (5 mandates); the Galician nationalist bloc BNG (1 mandate) and the Canarian coalition CCa (1 mandate).

No government formation since the adoption of the conciliatory democratic constitution of 1978, following the end of Franco's dictatorship, has polarized Spain as much as the current one. Protests against the formation of this government and, above all, against the planned amnesty for all those involved in the 2017 uprising in Catalonia have been growing for weeks. Hundreds of thousands of outraged citizens gathered in Madrid again this weekend, following 2.5 million people demonstrating across Spain last weekend.

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