The Spanish political system since the Constitution came into force has been based on a dual bipartisanship. A state, which could be called bipartisanship in the strict sense, and another that affects the Basque and Catalan nationalities, which has a singular presence that I don’t really know how to classify.
In order for the state bipartisanship to function stably from the general elections of 1979 to those of 2015, the complementarity of the hegemonic nationalist bipartisanship of the CiU and the PNV in the Catalan and Basque nationalities was necessary. Spanish society has always accepted as completely legitimate that one of the two Spanish government parties, the PSOE or the PP, could govern with the complement of CiU and the PNV. Although the PP, unlike the PSOE, initially protested against the support of CiU and the PNV for the PSOE government, it declared that the protest would be disqualified since in 1996 it went without interruption from “Pujol’s dwarf speaks Spanish” to the Majestic Pact.
