Why’s Spain’s election is a wake-up call for Europe’s right wing

Spain's election, which was won by the right-wing Popular Party but without enough support to govern, marks a rare setback for the growing influence of the political right across Europe, analysts say.

Published: 25 July 2023 09:28 CEST

Why's Spain's election is a wake-up call for Europe's right wing

Spanish far-right Vox party leader Santiago Abascal delivers a speech after Spain's general election at the party headquarters in Madrid on July 23, 2023. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP)

With barely a year until European elections in June, the PP’s inability to win a governing majority, even with its far-right partner Vox “means the radically conservative, far-right wave has not managed to cross the Pyrenees,” said Steven Forti, a political scientist at Barcelona’s Autonomous University.

“The signal Spain is sending to Europe is that this wave can be stopped”, he told AFP.

On paper, the PP won the vote with 136 of the parliament’s 350-seats, followed by the Socialists of outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez who won 122.

But for Forti, it amounted to little more than a “pyrrhic victory” and even a “political defeat”.

Polls had repeatedly predicted a PP victory, suggesting it would be able to amass an absolute majority with Vox, a troublesome ally due to its extreme positions but nonetheless an essential one if Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party was to govern.

Such an outcome could have brought the far right into Spain’s government for the first time since the Franco dictatorship ended in 1975.

Many in Europe thought that Spain was heading down the same path as taken by Sweden and Italy last year, or Finland earlier this year, countries where the right and the far-right have come together to rule.

And in Rome, far-right leader Giorgia Meloni is prime minister, heading Italy’s most far-right coalition since World War II.

Vox’s leader Santiago Abascal is a close ally of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L) and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

But whether the right’s setback in Spain is likely to prompt a rethink in Europe is doubtful says Thierry Chopin, a special adviser at the Institute Jacques Delors.

“It’s not at all certain because each national situation is very different,” he told AFP.

Vox, which emerged out of a split within the PP in 2013, has “a fairly outrageous narrative” and a form of radicalism that is “far from the strategy of trivialisation and respectability” exhibited by similar movements in other European countries, he said.

Throughout its campaign, Vox embarrassed Feijóo with its extreme positions ranging from a refusal to acknowledge gender violence, to its rejection of LGBTQ rights, or opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

Ideological convergence “has not worked” in Spain “as it did in Italy or in northern Europe,” Chopin said.

Sunday’s debacle triggered recriminations between the two parties, with Vox’s secretary general Ignacio Garriga accusing media outlets close to the PP of “demonising and manipulating Vox’s message” in order to win over voters.

But to assess the impact at a European level of Sunday’s right-wing failure in Spain, Forti says it will be necessary to see whether Sánchez and his radical left-wing Sumar allies manage to cling onto power.

If not, Spain will likely head into new elections towards the end of the year, or in early 2024 “just before the European elections” in June, he said.

Ahead of the European elections, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which includes the PP, has been in talks with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), which includes Vox and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, over a new political alliance within the parliament.

But the outcome of Spain’s election has “really complicated that strategy”, Forti said.

“What has happened in Spain reinforces my opinion that this alliance isn’t a foregone conclusion and that it won’t happen,” he said.

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Spain stands with ‘democracy’

Sánchez published a video on X showing him walking in the gardens at his official residence with González Urrutia and the opposition figure’s daughter Carolina González, who lives in Spain.

“Spain continues to work in favour of democracy, dialogue and the fundamental rights of the brotherly people of Venezuela,” he posted, adding that he “warmly welcomed Edmundo González Urrutia to our country”.

The 75-year-old went into hiding after the July 28th poll that the opposition insists he won, with Maduro ordering his arrest.

The United States on Thursday announced new sanctions against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing “accurate” results.

Venezuela issued a statement shortly afterwards denouncing the sanctions as a “crime of aggression”.

The US has recognised González Urrutia as the winner of the election.

So far, however, Spain and other European Union nations have limited themselves to refusing to accept Maduro as the victor and calling on the Venezuelan government to release the voting tally sheets.

“From a political point of view, the Spanish government has been clear since the elections were organised,” Sánchez had said Wednesday.

“We are doing something very important: working for unity in the European Union so that we can find a way out that reflects the democratic will expressed at the ballot box by the Venezuelan people.”