Far-right parties are coming to power across Europe. Is Spain next?

Last month, after Spain’s conservative and hard-right parties crushed the left in local elections, the winners in Elche, a small southeastern town known for ancient sculpture and shoe exports, signed a deal with implications for the future of Spain – and the rest of Europe.

The candidate of the conservative People’s Party had a chance to govern, but he needed the far-right Vox party, which in return for its support during the city council votes was replaced as deputy mayor and a new governing body to support the traditional family to defend. They inked their deal under the cross of the local church.

“This coalition model could be a good model for all of Spain,” said Pablo Ruz Villanueva, the new mayor of Elche, referring to the upcoming national elections on July 23, which most polls predict will see the Spanish government’s liberal Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to take off. Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. Vox’s new deputy mayor, Aurora Rodil Martinezcontinued: “My party will do everything in its power to make that happen.”

If Ms Rodil’s wish comes true, with Vox joining a coalition with more moderate conservatives, it would become the first right-wing party since Francisco Franco’s dictatorship to enter the national government.

Vox’s rise is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties gaining popularity, in some cases gaining power by entering governments as junior partners.

The parties have differences of opinion, but generally fear the economic consequences of globalization, saying that their countries will lose their national identities through migration, often from non-Christian or non-white majority countries, but also through an empowered European Union that according to them only cares for the elites. Their steady progress has added urgency to the now-urgent debate among liberals about how to circumvent a suddenly more influential law.

Some argue that the hard right should be marginalized, as was the case more than half a century after World War II. Others fear that the hard right has become too big to be ignored and that the only choice is to bring them to power in the hopes of normalizing them.

In Sweden, the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and has exercised some influence over policy-making. In Finland, where the right has ascended to the governing coalition, the nationalist Finnish party has risked destabilizing it, with a senior minister from that far-right party resigning last month after he was revealed to have made “Heil Hitler” jokes.

On Friday, the Dutch government led by Mark Rutte, a conservative and the longest-serving prime minister in the Netherlands, collapsed because the centrist and liberal parties in his coalition deemed his efforts to curb migration too harsh. Mr Rutte has had to guard his right flank against emerging populists and a long-standing hard-right party.

In Italy, the extreme right has seized power itself. But so far Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, raised politically in parties born from the ashes of fascism and a close ally of Spain’s Vox, has ruled more moderately than many in Europe expected. moderating power.

Elsewhere, hard-right parties are breaking through in countries where they have recently appeared to be contained.

In France, the once fringe party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen has become an established force as deep-seated anger against President Emmanuel Macron has recently exploded over issues such as pension changes and the integration and policing of the country’s minority communities. He’s out of the running and the election is still years away, but liberals across Europe shuddered when she recently passed him polls.

And in Germany, where the right has long been taboo, economic uncertainty and a new surge in asylum seekers have helped resurrect the far-right Alternative for Germany party. It is now the leading party in the former communist eastern states, according to polls, and is even gaining popularity in the wealthier and more liberal west.

Although the parties in different countries do not have identical proposals, they generally want to close the doors to migrants and cut benefits; hit the pause or back button when it comes to LGBTQ rights; and pursue a more protectionist trade policy. Some are suspicious of NATO and skeptical about climate change and sending weapons to Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, seemingly acknowledging that the political complexion of the continent is changing, said in Spain last week that the European Union must deliver tangible results to counter “extremist” forces.

In Spain, where the conservative Partido Popular has a good chance of finishing first in the upcoming elections, Esteban González Pons, a leading party official, said bringing far-right parties, such as Vox, into the government was a way to discourage them. neutralize. But he acknowledged that strategy involved risks.

“First, the bad case scenario: We can legitimize Vox,” he said.

“Then there’s a second chance: We can normalize Vox,” he said, adding that if they govern well, “Vox will be a different party, a conservative party within the system.”

For now, the situation is volatile and there are indications that Mr. Sánchez and his left-wing allies are gaining support. Vox also appears to be losing ground as the Sánchez campaign and well-known artists and liberals across Spain have focused on the threat of conservatives bringing Vox into government.

Spain has seemed a bright spot for liberals in recent years. Under Mr Sánchez, Spain has kept inflation low, eased tensions with separatists in Catalonia, and raised growth rates, pensions and the minimum wage. It is also generally popular in the European Union.

But the alliance between Mr Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces has fueled resentment among many voters.

Mr. González Pons, a senior Popular Party official, doesn’t think concerns that Vox might be collaborating with his conservatives are not entirely unfounded. “We are pro-European and Vox is not,” he said, adding that Vox “would prefer something like a general Brexit, so that all countries regain their own sovereignty.” He said Vox had views on gay rights and violence against women that are “red lines for us”.

Those lines began to emerge as Elche’s new leaders sat on leather armchairs in the mayor’s office last week, trying to form a united front. Mr. Ruz, the mayor of the conservative Partido Popular, and his Vox deputy, Ms. Rodil, took turns beating up the prime minister. But when pressed, the mayor acknowledged that his party recognized same-sex marriage and that he was more bothered by far-right parties such as Alternative for Germany than his ‘partner’. Still, he said, the Popular Party and Vox had similar voters, just different approaches to “implementation.”

“May I say something about that?” Mrs. Rodil said with a coy smile. “We have a stance that may be a bit firmer.” Vox, she said, believes in the “sovereignty of nations” and would like to make it harder for women to have abortions, positions she said some people in the mayoral party “don’t defend.” She said the “ambiguous” views of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Popular Party, were “worrying”.

Many worry about Vox instead.

“We have seen populism supported by the centre-right grow in small towns,” said Carlos González Serna, the former socialist mayor of Elche, who lost the election. He said that instead of shielding the far right, mainstream conservatives had given it an “umbilical cord” of legitimacy.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal split from the Popular Party in 2013 amid a slush-fund scandal. The popularity of the party grew in 2018 then more migrants came to Spain by sea than to any other European country. The nationalist Vox was also well positioned to exploit a reaction to the Catalan independence movement.

But Vox has also found support among Spaniards unhappy with their country’s progressive shift on climate change and social issues, including gay rights and feminism. Their campaign boards feature candidates trashing LGBTQ, feminist and other symbols. In the town of Náquera, near Elche, the newly elected mayor of the Vox party has ordered the removal of Pride flags from municipal buildings.

One resident, a 45-year-old truck driver named Maximo Ibañez, said he voted for Vox because the party spoke clearly, but also because he believes Spain’s pioneering legislation to explicitly protect women from gender-based violence – complete with special courts and stricter punish – discriminate against men.

“Women have a right to the presumption of innocence here,” he said.

One of Vox’s regional leaders joked that some women were too unattractive to be gang rapedand another said that “women are more combative because they don’t have penises.”

Ms. Rodil, Elche’s new deputy mayor with Vox, said her party had no quarrel with women, only with the idea that domestic violence should be seen through a gender-based ideology, and that a man, “just because he a man is bad, that he has a gene that makes him violent.”

She argued that Mr Sánchez’s government had endangered women with failed legislation that had the potential to release sex offenders from prison. Mr Sánchez has apologized for the unintended effects of the so-called yes-is-yes law, which was intended to categorize all non-consensual sex as rape, but which, due to changes in sentencing requirements, has risked shortening the term of imprisonment or imprisonment. free potentially hundreds of sex offenders.

As many in Europe say it’s time to take right-wing parties more seriously, some voters in Elche lamented that they hadn’t taken Vox seriously enough.

“I didn’t think they were going to form a government and the fact that they did surprised me,” said Isabel Chinchilla, 67, in a square lined with three statues of the Virgin Mary. “I am going to vote in the national elections so that this does not happen again, because they are very reactionary in their view of society.”

Rachel Chandler contributed reporting from Elche.