A general election was held in Spain yesterday to end a six-month deadlock between the traditional parties, and it appears the big winner is the center-right People’s Party (PP), which gained seats. The center-left Socialist Party lost ground, and the hardcore left party, Podemos, which is lead by “the one with the ponytail,” Pablo Iglesias, neither gained or lost seats.

This result will be read as good news for the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who will be less pressured to weaken the austerity, pro-bank, and generally undemocratic policies she imposed on Greece and other EU countries. The UK might have gone to the dogs, but Spain has not gone to the left. If those two things had happened at once (Brexit and a spectacular performance by Podemos), then she would have been pushed to the traditional left (a little less austerity, a little more democracy) to avoid the other dogs of Europe.

To conclude, this is what the American economist James Galbraith has to say about Brexit, austerity, Germany, and Greece's debt crisis on the Radical Political Economy blog: "The groundwork for the Brexit debacle was laid last July when Europe crushed the last progressive pro-European government the EU is likely to see – the SYRIZA government elected in Greece in January 2015."