Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was able to claim victory in the country's general election on Sunday but will face a struggle to build a governing coalition as his conservative Popular Party (PP) was unable to gain the needed 176-seat majority in Parliament.

PP deputies will now account for 123 lawmakers, meaning that Rajoy will need to form a coalition government with one of the country's other political parties, USA Today reported. Nevertheless, his conservative force has no obvious partner to do that.

Other parties represented in parliament will be the opposition Socialist Party -- the PP's traditional foe -- which will claim 90 seats; the far-left Podemos Party, which came in third at 69 seats; and the centrist, business-friendly Ciudadanos Party, which will hold 40 seats.

The Socialists have admitted that as the leader of the strongest group, Rajoy will be first in line to try to form a new government. Nevertheless, a government coalition of smaller forces that would leave out the PP is not out of question, the Wall Street Journal reported. That scenario would be a first since Spain's return to democracy in the late 1970s following the end of the Franco dictatorship.

Spanish King Felipe VI will start a round of meetings with parties to see who is in a position to form a government when the new Parliament convenes on Jan. 13. The king will nominate a candidate for prime minister, whom lawmakers could eventually confirm with a simple plurality of votes in a second round, the newspaper pointed out.

"The meetings are more important when the electoral results are not very clear, and the king plays a decisive role in that case to solve a governmental crisis," constitutional law professor Antonio Bar Cendón told El País.

If several attempts to form a new government fail altogether, Spain would eventually have to hold new elections to fix the stalemate. That, however, has never happened in the country's post-Franco history, and experts seem confident that Rajoy will either be confirmed or a new premier elected.