On 24 May 2018 , the National Court found that the PP profited from the illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme of the Gürtel case , confirming the existence of an illegal accounting and financing structure that had run in parallel with the party 's official one since 1989 and ruling that the PP helped establish " a genuine and effective system of institutional corruption through the manipulation of central , autonomous and local public procurement " . This event prompted the PSOE to submit a motion of no confidence in Rajoy and in Cs withdrawing its support from the government and demanding the immediate calling of an early election . An absolute majority of 180 MPs in the Congress of Deputies voted to oust Mariano Rajoy from power on 1 June 2018 , replaced him as Prime Minister with PSOE 's Pedro Sánchez . On 5 June , Rajoy announced his farewell from politics and his return to his position as property registrar in Santa Pola , vacating his seat in the Congress of Deputies and triggering a leadership contest in which the party 's Vice Secretary-General of Communication Pablo Casado defeated former Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and became new PP president on 21 July 2018
motion of no confidence
2018 vote of no confidence in the government of Mariano Rajoy
2019 Spanish general election