International

Spain's Socialist party members will certainly have the biggest smiles on their faces this morning. But landslide victory this was not.

Financial markets and the EU would ideally like to see the Socialists now jump into bed with the centre-right Citizens' party (which prefers to describe itself as "liberal") but a more likely Socialist party partnership is with left-wing Podemos with added support from Basque and possibly Catalan parties.

The recent push for Catalan independence and the perceived failure of Spain's traditional politicians to handle the situation is what suddenly drew large numbers of voters to the populist nationalist Vox party.

In the end, Vox managed to win 24 parliamentary seats, roughly what polls had predicted, but the result fell far short of the political earthquake they had hoped for.