Spain’s conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has turned down an offer by King Felipe VI to try to form a new government following last month’s inconclusive elections.
The news, in a statement from Spain’s royal palace on Friday evening, followed a week of talks between the monarch and party leaders.
In a statement, the palace said the king would begin fresh talks with the leaders next Wednesday in a bid to find another candidate.
Rajoy’s Popular party won most seats – 123 – in the 20 December election but that was well short of an overall majority in the 350-seat lower house of parliament.
The king will now most likely call on the leader of the opposition Socialist party, Pedro Sánchez, to try to form a government. The Socialists came second in the election with 90 seats and appear to have more chance of mustering support from other groups in parliament to form a coalition.
The nominated candidate must win a vote of confidence in parliament. If no party leader manages to win parliament’s support within two months of the first vote, fresh elections must be called.
No group had expressed any intention of voting for Rajoy, which made parliamentary approval for him highly unlikely.
Earlier on Friday, Sánchez welcomed an offer by the radical leftist party Podemos to form a coalition government, but insisted that Rajoy should have first shot.
Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, said he wants the Socialists, Podemos and the smaller United Left to build a “government of change”, with cabinet positions allotted in accordance with the results of the election. Iglesias suggested he could be deputy prime minister in a Sánchez-led government.
The newcomer Podemos and its allies came third in the election with 69 seats. The United Left has two.
Negotiations between the parties to form alliances have so far come to nothing.
“We have decided to seize the initiative and take a step forward,” Iglesias told reporters after meeting the king. “There is no more time for hesitation. Either you’re for change or for stagnation and impasse.”
Rajoy’s popularity has plunged over the past four years in government chiefly because of party-linked corruption scandals, unpopular laws and austerity measures brought in to help get Spain out of a severe economic crisis.
December’s election produced Spain’s most fragmented parliament in decades and ended the alternating grip on power the Popular party and the Socialists have had. The emergence of new parties such as Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos group, which claimed 40 seats, was interpreted as a sign that Spaniards wanted change.