After Italy and Sweden, will Spain shift right?
Analysis
07:15
If the country’s conservative parties unite, they will become a serious electoral force
past Jorge González-Gallarza
Supporters of Vox gather in Madrid. Credit: Getty
After her defection from the party, former Vox party stalwart Macarena Olona has done so Certainly to take Spain’s culture wars abroad. Through a new non-profit organization, Olona wants to combat the excesses of feminist ideology in the Spanish-speaking world by advocating for a fair trial for men accused of domestic abuse.
It’s quite a surprising turnaround for someone who rose to prominence during a landslide victory in Andalusia’s 2019 election. But Olona’s failure to capitalize on the election win in June this year points to a bleak scenario for the Spanish right. Assuming the votes of the right-wing parties Partido Popular (PP) and Vox become a majority in next year’s parliamentary elections, it is unclear whether the two will even be able to reach an agreement.
As seen in the recent French election, where the split of the right-wing populist bloc into the respective parties of Zemmour and Le Pen made Macron’s second victory in May easier, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s bid for a second term will be aided by a disunited opposition.
But after the election upsets that brought together grand tent coalitions of right-wing liberals and hard-line conservatives in Sweden and Italy, Spain could be the next country where a left-wing government is replaced by such an alliance. In next year’s general election, a winning coalition of the neoliberal PP and the conservative Vox parties could definitively confirm Europe’s rightward shift by bringing the proportion of the continent’s people governed by right-wing ministries close to half.
The two parties share a clearly defined common enemy. When Sánchez took office in 2018 as part of a coalition with the far-left Podemos party and a motley assortment of left-wing regionalist parties, Sánchez’s government embarked on an agenda that combined the left’s old-fashioned statism with an emphasis on feminism and social environmentalism. policy.
Sánchez has maintained this uneasy alliance for over four years, but that is partly thanks to the weakness of the right. After all, the current prime minister came to power because of corruption allegations against his predecessor, the PP’s Mariano Rajoy. Rajoy was replaced as party leader by Pablo Casado, who was seen by Spain’s disaffected voters as more of the same, swelling Vox’s ranks.
Earlier this year, however, Casado was replaced by Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, who is slightly further to the right. Feijóo faces a choice: to choose a coalition with Vox patterned after Italy and Sweden, or to strong-arm the Socialists to defend Sánchez and pursue a Grosse Koalizione in the style of Olaf Scholz.
Neither option is ideal. If Feijóo helps clean up Vox’s image as a junior partner, it will dismay centrists within the PP, while government clashes over immigration and the EU will still loom over the coalition. If he chooses to Macronize Spanish politics by creating the country’s first alliance of the two major parties, this will cast Vox as the only real alternative to the two-party stranglehold.
At the same time, Vox radiates populist energy but may be hitting a glass ceiling. With all the potential ex-PP voters already in their ranks, some may even be tempted to turn back to Feijóo’s party. Most polls give Vox not more than 20% of voting intentions. And in Madrid’s regional elections last year, a big win for lockdown skeptic Isabel Díaz Ayuso, revealed the PP’s potential to be a unifying force against Sánchez bypassing Vox entirely.
The dilemma for Spain as a whole is correspondingly strong. In one scenario, PP listens Von der Leyen-style warning and promises to turn his back on Vox’s national populism, instead of a centrist agenda with a sanitized Socialist Party (PSOE). Alternatively, the party meets the expectations of its voters by aligning itself with Vox for a more explicitly right-wing agenda.
Which way Feijóo chooses to go will largely depend on Spain’s regions, where the PP and Vox govern jointly in Andalusia and Castilla y León, and may do so elsewhere after next year’s regional races in May. It is still too early to say, but after Italy and Sweden, the European right’s next victory may come from Spain.