Spain’s political crisis broke down

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s resistance was finally broken Thursday, overwhelmed by the drumbeat of corruption revelations that has grown throughout his seven years in office, according to Bloomberg.

Rajoy, 63, didn’t even turn up to the parliament in Madrid for the afternoon session as one party after another declared its support for Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez’s no-confidence motion today. By the end of the session, the government ranks were peppered with empty seats as ministers and backbenchers abandoned the chamber.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the debate, Defense Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal denied reports that Rajoy would resign to avoid defeat in Friday’s vote, but she accepted that Sanchez is set to replace him as prime minister.

Elected by a landslide in 2011 as Spain’s property crash spiraled into a full-blown financial crash, Rajoy took a European bailout to fix the country’s banking system and laid the foundations for an economic rebound that’s now in its fifth year.

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Catalans and Corruption

But the seeds of his demise were there from the start. His 2010 legal challenge to new powers for the Catalan government triggered a resurgence in separatism that would fatally damage his authority seven years later when the region threatened to break away from Spain. And prosecutors were already investigating the PP corruption racket that ultimately forced him out.

“He leaves Spain with a more divided society and a political culture that has suffered great damage,” Alejandro Quiroga, professor of Spanish history at Newcastle University, England, said in a phone interview. “The corruption has been brutal.”

Rajoy is the last of a generation of conservative politicians who shaped modern Spain for good and ill. He was at Jose Maria Aznar’s side as the PP’s first prime minister fanned the second economic boom since Spain’s return to democracy in in 1978.

Rajoy served as minister of public administration, then education, interior and eventually deputy prime minister. In 2003, Aznar handed over to him as party leader. According to a verdict by the National Court last week, officials at party HQ in Madrid were already taking kickbacks from companies seeking public contracts.

Since those days, Rajoy has survived two election defeats as party leader, an EU rescue and even a helicopter crash. But the specter of corruption was creeping closer.

In 2013, El Pais newspaper published ledgers from a secret party slush fund that showed regular payments to “M. Rajoy.” El Mundo printed text messages in which the prime minister promised to do whatever he could to help former party treasurer Luis Barcenas, who was caught up in the corruption probe. Rajoy denied any wrongdoing.

In 2014 he apologized in parliament for what he recognized then was an “accumulation of scandals.” His colleagues from the Aznar government helped fuel the perception of a party gone rotten.