The general elections in Spain this Sunday are important for the future of the country, but also for that of the whole of Europe.
A defeat of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would likely catapult the far-right Vox Party from its current status as a backroom demagogue into that of a parliamentary force, and if Vox and the People’s Party (PP) form a coalition government, as widely expected, it would spell the end of Spain’s long dislike of far-right politicians, which has prevailed since the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975.
Should Vox join the Spanish government, its chilling, hyper-nationalist, anti-LGBTQ, feminist and anti-immigrant agenda will push Europe further into the far-right abyss. The capitulation of Spain’s centre-right conservatives to Vox – who have traditionally rejected far-right alliances but are now keen to return to power – will have repercussions across the continent, particularly as Spain takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.
culture war
The rapprochement between conservative and far-right parties in Spain has resulted in an election campaign dominated by culture war issues. Vox’s sinister propaganda demonized immigrants and homosexuals and portrayed Sánchez and his party as enemies of the people. Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the PP president of the Madrid region, called her political opponents “communists”. To commemorate the anti-clerical violence in Spain before and during the Spanish Civil War, she even accused the opposition of wanting to burn down Catholic churches.
In response, Sanchez portrayed the upcoming elections, sparked by the Socialist Party’s poor results in May’s local and regional elections, as an existential struggle for Spanish democracy. In the final days of the election campaign, former Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero went even further, reiterating that “the centre-right party no longer exists”, that only the far-right remain and that the PP “has disappeared from the map”. she has left the center of the political spectrum. Ayuso immediately responded by claiming, “When they start calling you fascists, you know you’re on the right track.”
Beyond attacks on civil liberties, the Spanish right-wing extremists focus on opposing regional autonomy. For years, Vox has proposed banning Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, and after years of relative calm under Sanchez’s leadership, there is a real risk of a resurgence of separatist and secessionist movements in divided Spain.
Economic successes of Pedro Sanchez
The right’s strategy of using culture wars is deliberate to cover up the threat that its neoliberal economic policies pose to living standards and social justice. Directly inspired by the Reagan-Thatcher textbooks, the PP’s agenda aims to eliminate the wealth tax, lower the income tax, privatize public services and cut Social Security. When former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss attempted to impose the same outdated agenda in 2022, she came close to crippling the UK economy completely.
Similarly, the PP’s focus on Kulturkampf issues aims to distract attention from the economic achievements of Sanchez and his coalition and his environmental agenda. Since taking office in 2018, Sánchez’s government has made significant achievements in reducing high levels of poverty and inequality in Spain.
In addition, Sánchez managed to secure a collective agreement to stabilize inflation, accepted by both the unions and employers, which provides for a wage increase of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024 and 2025. The country currently has the highest growth rate and one of the lowest inflation rates in the euro zone.
If re-elected, Sanchez would focus on housing, which he sees as Spain’s “big national cause” for the next decade. He also proposed new health protection measures, including the introduction of a maximum period of 60 days for consultation with a specialist and 15 days for psychological support for children and young people under 15 years of age.
Growing popularity of far-right parties
Spain is far from the only country where the rise of the far right poses a threat. Across the continent, the growing popularity of far-right parties has led previously moderate parties to adopt extreme positions.
In Germany, the rising nativist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is pushing the CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU further to the right. And in Finland, the ultra-conservative Party of Finland formed a coalition government with the centre-right, urging them to adopt tough anti-immigration policies. The same trend can be seen in other Western European countries, from Sweden to Austria, and could be seen in next year’s European Parliament elections. And of course Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Italian Brothers Party (Fratelli) in Italy, is the most right-wing leader the country has seen since Benito Mussolini.
The emerging symbiosis between far-right movements in Europe was supported by wealthy allies in the United States. In September 2022, representatives of sixteen European nativist parties, including the Polish Pis, the Slovak populists led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, and the far-right movement led by former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, gathered in Miami for the National Conservatism Conference, at which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also a Republican presidential candidate and Donald Trump impersonator, was the guest of honor.
The Florida conference was strikingly similar to another far-right summit organized by the same group and held at Rome’s Grand Hotel Plaza in February 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. Hoping to establish a far-right alternative to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, participants had portrayed nationalism, tradition and the nuclear family as bulwarks against “globalist” attempts to destroy the countries of Europe and their respective cultures. During this rally, Meloni outlined his agenda, which ultimately resonated positively with Italian voters, namely “to defend national identity and the existence of nation states as the only means of safeguarding the sovereignty and freedom of peoples”.
Ironically, each member of this unlikely global coalition of anti-globalists claims to speak for each of their countries’ unique cultural heritages and be free from international ties, while using the same xenophobic “us versus them” rhetoric to stoke nativist fears.
It has been 175 years since Karl Marx conjured up a specter to haunt Europe. Today it is not the specter of communism that Marx intended that is haunting Europe, but that of populist nationalism.
The outcome of the Spanish elections could reinforce the seriousness and urgency of this threat.