Spain’s general election on Sunday could increase the number of EU member governments formed by a coalition with the far-right. Hungary, Poland, Italy, Finland, and Sweden constitute a front that challenges European values and the EU’s future. Spain risks having a government coalition between the conservative People’s Party and the far-right VOX.
As Spain took over the EU’s rotating Presidency on July 1, this perspective raised concerns about the ability of the new government to fulfil the Presidency requirements.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the early general election after the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and its small left wing coalition partner, Unidas Podemos, experienced a devastating defeat in May local and regional elections.
The conservative Popular Party and Vox increased their popular support. According to the polls, the PP is in first place. However, it will probably need a partner, thus the far-right Vox party.
VOX emerged during the last few years, mainly through an exhausting exploit of social media spreading hate speech, disinformation, and fake news.
Within the PP, as it happens in many conservative parties across Europe, many welcome closer cooperation with the far-right. After the May elections, the two parties agreed to rule together in 140 cities and towns.
If so, Spain will enter a new period with unpredictable consequences for social inclusion, democratic rights, including the rights of women and the LGBT community, and the rights of minorities and vulnerable citizens, such as the Roma people, homeless people, refugees, and migrants.
The culture wars promoted by Vox promise a future of isolation for Spain, a degradation towards the black years of Francoism.
However, PP is not so naïve. Vox has a neo-liberal agenda concerning public health, privatisations, and top-rate tax cuts.
In addition, Vox envisages a Franco-inspired centralized state, an idea that many conservatives of the PP embrace.
Without the assistance of Vox, the PP cannot deploy its conservative agenda.
Demolishing the Spanish democracy achievements
The Vox agenda comprises the entire political arsenal of the Far-Right. The leader, Santiago Abascal, a former PP member, made a cocktail of denialism concerning human and democratic rights, environmental issues, animal welfare, and nostalgia for the glorious past, promising Spaniards a gloomy future.
Playing with ridiculousness, the leader Abascal supports the civilizational role of Spanish colonialism in Latin America, denying seeing the existence of any crime committed by the Spanish Empire.
Vox has declared culture wars against women, LGBT people, and migrants since its foundation.
More concretely, Vox is an anti-feminist party openly against equal rights for women and LGBT. Abascal campaigns against feminist organisations and his party opposes abortion rights and rejects the need to combat gender violence with appropriate legislation.
Vox hates diversity and denies the right of LGBT people to conduct a peaceful life. Last February, the Spanish progressive government adopted courageous legislation allowing transgender teens (at least 14) to change their legal gender without medical or juridical interference. Now, with Vox in government, this law risks being annulled.
Vox and the PP challenged the Trans Law before the Constitutional Court, and Vox promised to repeal it once in power. In addition, Vox calls for excluding hormone replacement therapies from the public healthcare system, leaving gender transition procedures only to the rich.
The party also demonises migrants and refugees. By promoting fierce anti-Muslim rhetoric and creating fake news concerning them, including the allegations that migrants commit the most rapes and sexual assaults, Vox spreads fear and terror to the common man, and anger and conspiracy theories to the unemployed, marginalised youth.
Vox also denies climate change and is in favour of bullfighting. In this respect, however, also the conservatives flirt with the bullfighting environment.
Back to the Franco ideas?
The efforts for Catalan independence that shook Spain a few years ago have boosted Vox’s influence. The party supports a strong state and denies regional autonomy.
This remarkable achievement of Spanish democracy is now in peril. VOX’s anti-constitutional aims – against the Autonomous Communities, the regional structure of the country – would derail stability in the country.
Although the party avoids any reference to the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, its manifesto copies the doctrines of its fascist regime.
The political environment in the Autonomous Communities is highly pluralistic, comprising national parties but also regional ones. Catalonia and the Basque country have movements seeking regional autonomy and even independence.
How will a governing Vox promote such an agenda? How will the citizens affected by such a fundamental change react?
The near future will reveal to what extent such anti-constitutional attempts damaged Spain.
The responsibilities of the PP
In this gloomy perspective, the People’s Party and EPP have their share of responsibility.
During the last year, the PP has pursued a media and parliamentary campaign at the edge of populism against the government of Pedro Sánchez, polarizing the political discourse.
By deploying such a populist style, the PP gained votes. However, it also facilitated a general shift towards the far-right.
Interestingly several EPP members across Europe increasingly use a populist style, implement campaigns whose arguments and slogans stand at the edge of disinformation, attempt to control the media, and flirt with the far-right parties or search to copy their agendas.
The Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), with its long-standing flirt and cooperation with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the Slovenian Democratic Party of Janez Janša are good examples depicting this rising tendency among EPP parties.
Despite the harm a coalition with Vox means for Spain, such a development will have immediate consequences for the EU.
After the far-right Finns party obtained seven ministries in the coalition Finnish government, the far-right government of Italy, the support of the Sweden Democrats to the government of Stockholm, and the increasing rise of the AfD party in Germany, it is time to re-consider policies towards the reasons they boost and nurture the far-right success and decide politics of isolation of such parties.
Can we imagine France with Marine Le Pen as President, a German coalition government between the AfD and CDU/CSU hardliners, with Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orbán, and the Polish Prime Minister?
