Spanish Congress convenes for first time since general election

Acting Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy said on Wednesday he was going into the new legislature with "hope and dedication to Spain" when the Spanish Congress sat for the first time since the general elections on December 20.

Those elections left Spain with a hung parliament as Rajoy's People's Party (PP) saw their overall majority wiped out in a vote that left them with 123 seats in the 350-seat congress and needing to reach pacts with other parties in order to continue to govern.

The new parliament convened at a moment what Spain is continuing its slow climb out of the economic crisis, but with an unemployment rate still above 20 percent and also at a time when it faces the threat of the breakaway of the Catalan region in the north-east of the country.

The December elections saw the Socialist Party (PSOE) win 90 seats, while the left wing Podemos claimed 69 and center-right Citizens 40, with the remaining seats being divided among the United Left, as well as Catalan and Basque nationalist groups among others.

One of the first agreements reached in the new Congress was to name the experienced Socialist, Patxi Lopez as the Speaker after a pact reached by the PP, PSOE and Citizens, something that acting Foreign Affairs Minister, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo viewed with optimism regarding possible future pacts between the three parties.

"It is a sign for the future," he said, adding that agreement between those three parties in the face of the formation of pro-independence Catalan regional government was "what Spain needs."

He added that Spain needed a change and for "all of society to be implicated in that change. The political parties have to give an example," with the PP, PSOE and Citizens fulfilling the needs of "constitutional legality, forming part of the European project and having Western values." Endit