On Wednesday, the Spanish parliament rejected the motion of no confidence of the right-wing populist Vox party by a large majority. Of the total of 350 deputies, only the 52 members of the Vox group and a former Ciudadanos deputy voted to replace Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez with 89-year-old economist Ramón Tamames. There were 201 votes against.

The conservative People's Party (PP) and two other parliamentarians abstained. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo stayed away from the debate and travelled to the EU Commission in Brussels on Wednesday.

"The only reason for this destructive motion is to turn back time by 50 years," Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in parliament on Wednesday. At the end of the debate, Tamames accused Sánchez's Socialists of dividing Spain and bringing back the times of the beginning of the civil war.

Leading commentators unanimously criticised the hopeless motion at the beginning of the election year. The conservative newspaper "El Mundo" wrote in its editorial on Wednesday that the motion of no confidence had only contributed to increasing the electoral chances of the left-wing government and damaging the reputation of parliament. According to the left-liberal newspaper "El País", the government has emerged stronger from the debate because the arguments of Vox and its candidate Tamames did not agree.