Votes from Spaniards abroad see Socialists lose a seat to conservatives in hung parliament  

Votes from Spaniards living abroad were counted on Friday, leading to the Socialists losing a seat to the conservative People's Party in the hung parliament resulting from the July 23 general election.

Prime minister Pedro Sánchez's left-wing party now has 121 seats, while the right-wing party has 137, making pro-independence Junts even more key to Spain's political future: if before Junts only had to abstain for the Socialists to be successful, now they would have to vote in favor of them. 

Combined, the People's Party and far-right Vox, their natural allies, have 170 seats, six short of a majority in the 350-MP chamber - with the potential support of the right-wing Canarian Coalition and UPN, they still only have 172 representatives.

The progressive bloc, on the other hand, has 171 MPs from the Socialist, Sumar, Esquerra, EH Bildu, PNB, and BNG parties, making Puigdemont's Junts party's votes critical to its success. 

While Junts may be even more ideologically opposed to the People's Party's and Vox's tenets than those of the Socialists, it hardly has close ties to the left-wing unionist party, which is categorically against the independence movement's main demands: an amnesty for all of its leaders and a recognized independence referendum.

Moderate pro-independence Esquerra and more confrontational Junts have since pledged to create a "common front" in the negotiations to form a new government. 

In the meantime, neither the Socialists nor the Catalan parties appear to be too rushed to get these talks done - if there is anything they all seem to agree on now it is "slowly but surely" and "after the summer."