Small-Vox symptoms: Spain’s elections
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2023
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After no party won a majority, forming a government may take weeks—or another election. But predictions that Vox, a far-right party, might enter government failed to materialise. Russia’s navy is repainting its vessels in a bid to frustrate munitions powered by artificial intelligence (10:03). And why the push to invent outlandish ice-cream flavours such as ketchup is deeply misguided (17:59).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. |
| 0:08.0 | And I'm Aura Ugunby. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:18.0 | Russia's warships are getting a makeover and not just to look pretty. The Navy is repainting its vessels for tactical reasons. |
| 0:25.0 | Because the art of deception at sea has to become slightly more artful in the era of AI-controlled weaponry. |
| 0:33.0 | And have you ever had cheese and pickle flavoured ice cream? Trust me, you probably don't want to try it. |
| 0:40.0 | We take you on a trip to a shop doing weird and wonderful things with the frosty treat. |
| 0:56.0 | But first... |
| 1:03.0 | Voters in Spain have awakened today to a political reality a bit different from what polls and pundits had widely predicted. |
| 1:11.0 | The general election was expected to neatly oust the governing socialist party, making way for the centre-right people's party. |
| 1:19.0 | But in the end, it wasn't quite so neat. The people's party did get the largest share of yesterday's vote. |
| 1:25.0 | And its leader Alberto Núñez-Fajó crowed that it had won the election and deserved to form a government. |
| 1:31.0 | Ghanado las elecciones nos corresponde intentar formar gobierno como siempre ha ocurrido en la democracia española. Buenas noches. |
| 1:43.0 | Muchas gracias. |
| 1:44.0 | That isn't as straightforward as it sounds. No party got a majority, so forming a government means some horse trading with parties further from the political centre. |
| 1:54.0 | Principal among them is Vox, a young-ish hard-right party which had been predicted to do better, a prediction that in the end horrified lots of voters. |
| 2:04.0 | Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, said that it had been a day of concern. |
| 2:13.0 | He predicted that the horse trading wouldn't go anywhere, and that Vox would soon have another shot, because there would probably be another election. |
| 2:27.0 | For his part, the socialist party leader, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, declared that those who had proposed a regression on rights and freedoms had failed. |
| 2:37.0 | Those who planned the machismo, the rights and freedoms had failed today. |
| 2:45.0 | There are many more of us who want Spain to continue moving forward, he said. Vox's star may have faded, but how Spain moved forward from this mess of electoral maths is exceedingly unclear. |
| 2:58.0 | Last night was an unexpectedly close race with the centre-right party, the People's Party, and the far-right party Vox failing to get an outright majority of seats. |
| 3:09.0 | Lane Green is the economist, Madrid Burochef. |
... |
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