A2 · Elementary
7 min
politicshistoryinternational relationseurope
Bulgaria: Ocho Elecciones, Cero Soluciones
Bulgaria: Eight Elections, Zero Solutions
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Elementary level — perfect for beginners building confidence.
So, today Bulgaria held its eighth parliamentary election since April 2021.
Eight.
In five years.
I want to just sit with that number for a second.
Bueno, ocho elecciones en cinco años.
Eight elections in five years.
Es mucho.
That's a lot, Octavio says.
It is a lot.
For context, the United States has had one presidential election in that same period.
France had one.
Germany had one.
Bulgaria has had eight.
Mira, Bulgaria tiene un problema grande.
Octavio cuts to it: Bulgaria has always had a big problem.
Siempre.
This isn't new.
Right.
And the problem isn't just that they keep voting.
It's that they keep voting and nobody can form a government that lasts.
Coalitions form, collapse, repeat.
The country has been running on caretaker administrations for most of five years.
La verdad es que hay mucha corrupción.
Octavio names it plainly: the truth is there's a lot of corruption.
Corruption.
That word comes up every single time.
Bulgaria is consistently ranked as the most corrupt country in the European Union, every year, by Transparency International.
It's been a member since 2007 and the needle has barely moved.
Bueno, el partido GERB tiene mucho poder.
Octavio introduces the key player: GERB, the party with the real power in Bulgaria, has dominated the system for years.
GERB.
Boyko Borisov's party.
This man was prime minister three times, and he built a political machine that was extraordinarily effective at winning elections and, critics say, at capturing the state.
A ver, Borisov es muy famoso en Bulgaria.
Octavio notes that Borisov is very well known in Bulgaria.
Famous is right.
The man has a remarkable survival instinct.
He's been indicted, investigated, photographed with what appeared to be gold bars and stacks of cash in his bedroom, and he keeps coming back.
There's a darkly comic quality to it.
Sí, pero muchas personas no quieren a Borisov.
Octavio acknowledges the other side: yes, but a lot of people have had enough of Borisov.
That's where 2020 becomes so important.
Because that summer, Bulgarians took to the streets for months.
Massive protests in Sofia, demanding Borisov resign, demanding that the chief prosecutor, who was widely seen as his political ally, step down.
It was genuinely remarkable.
Mira, en 2020 mucha gente protesta en Sofía.
Octavio confirms it: in 2020, huge numbers of people were in the streets of Sofia.
And those protests worked, sort of.
Borisov fell in 2021.
But here's the thing, the opposition that replaced him was fractured.
So many different reform parties, none of them able to agree on anything long enough to govern.
Los jueces en Bulgaria no son libres.
Octavio makes a sharp point about the judicial problem: the judges in Bulgaria aren't independent.
The judiciary is the key to all of this.
The EU has been pushing Bulgaria on judicial reform since before it joined.
There was a special monitoring mechanism, the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, that Brussels used to keep pressure on Sofia for years.
It was only lifted in 2023.
Bulgaria está en la Unión Europea.
Octavio states the basic fact that matters here: Bulgaria is in the European Union.
Since 2007.
And it's still the poorest member state, by GDP per capita.
Now, some of that is structural, post-communist transition, geography.
But five years of political chaos doesn't help when you're trying to absorb EU funds and implement reforms.
La verdad, muchos búlgaros viven con poco dinero.
Octavio grounds it in reality: the truth is that many Bulgarians live with very little money.
And that poverty has driven one of the most dramatic demographic collapses in the modern world.
Bulgaria had nine million people when communism fell in 1989.
Today it has about six and a half million.
That is not just emigration, that is a country hemorrhaging its future.
Sí, muchas personas van a otros países.
Octavio agrees simply: yes, many people leave for other countries.
You lose the young people, the engineers, the doctors, the teachers, and then you wonder why your state institutions are hollowed out.
It's a brutal feedback loop.
Weak institutions drive emigration, emigration weakens institutions further.
Bueno, hoy Rumen Radev es el favorito.
Octavio brings us back to today's election: the frontrunner is Rumen Radev, the former president now leading the Progressive Bulgaria coalition.
Radev is an interesting figure.
He was a fighter pilot, became air force chief, then president.
He served two terms as a largely ceremonial head of state but used that platform constantly to needle the government.
And now he's running for parliament, which is unusual.
Radev no es muy pro-Europa.
Octavio flags the crucial ideological wrinkle: Radev isn't strongly pro-European.
Es diferente.
He's different from the reformist, liberal bloc that the EU would prefer to see win.
The label the polls use is soft eurosceptic.
Which in this context means he's skeptical of some EU foreign policy positions, he's been reluctant about sanctions on Russia, he's pushed for dialogue over confrontation.
That sets him apart sharply from the pro-Western reform parties.
Mira, Bulgaria tiene una historia con Rusia.
Octavio explains why that position has real roots: Bulgaria has a deep history with Russia.
The extraordinary thing is how deep those ties actually go.
Russia liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878.
The Bulgarian alphabet is Cyrillic, shared with Russian.
The Orthodox church connects them spiritually.
So when Western analysts say Bulgaria is soft on Russia, there are Bulgarians who would say: you don't understand our history.
A ver, muchos búlgaros hablan bien de Rusia.
Octavio confirms: many Bulgarians speak positively about Russia.
Which creates a genuinely uncomfortable situation for NATO.
Bulgaria has been a NATO member since 2004.
But you have a significant portion of the electorate that views Russia with sympathy, and a leading political force that reflects that.
That tension doesn't disappear just because you sign a treaty.
Es que la situación es muy complicada ahora.
Octavio says it plainly: the situation is very complicated right now.
Especially with Ukraine.
Since February 2022, Bulgaria has been one of the most hesitant NATO members on military support.
Governments have fallen partly over the question of whether to send weapons.
The pro-Russian sentiment in the country is a direct operational constraint for the alliance.
Bulgaria no da armas a Ucrania.
Octavio states it flatly: Bulgaria doesn't give weapons to Ukraine.
Es verdad.
That's the reality.
So here is the real question today.
If Radev's coalition wins and actually manages to form a government this time, what does that mean for Bulgaria's position in Europe?
Does the EU get a partner that's going to be awkward on Russia?
Does NATO get a member that slows down consensus?
Bueno, tal vez Bulgaria tiene un gobierno ahora.
Octavio is cautiously optimistic about one thing at least: maybe, just maybe, Bulgaria gets an actual government this time.
Maybe.
But I've read that sentence about Bulgaria before.
Every single election cycle, analysts say maybe this time.
And then the coalitions collapse because nobody trusts each other enough, because the corruption runs through too many institutions, because forming a government requires making deals that everybody knows are compromised.
Mira, formar un gobierno en Bulgaria es difícil.
Octavio concedes the point with his usual directness: forming a government in Bulgaria is genuinely hard.
Look, what strikes me most is the human cost of all this instability.
Five years without a proper long-term budget.
EU recovery funds sitting unspent because there's no government stable enough to implement them.
Reforms that were promised in 2021 still waiting.
This is what political dysfunction actually costs, not in theory but in hospitals and roads and schools.
La verdad es que Bulgaria necesita un cambio.
Octavio closes with a simple truth that carries real weight: Bulgaria needs a change.