If Spain’s national election on Sunday goes as most polls and analysts suggest, the mainstream conservatives may come out on top but need allies on the political fringes to govern, bringing the first hard-right party to power since the Franco dictatorship.
The potential rise of this hard-right party, Vox, which has a deeply nationalist spirit imbued with the ghost of Franco, would bring Spain into the growing ranks of European nations where mainstream conservative parties have partnered with previously taboo forces out of electoral necessity. It is an important marker for a continent in political flux and a pregnant moment for a country that has long struggled with the legacy of its dictatorship.
Even before Spaniards cast a single vote, it has raised questions about where the country’s political heart really lies: whether its painful past and the transition to democracy just four decades ago have turned Spain into a mostly moderate, inclusive and centrist country, or whether it could veer towards the extremes once more.
Spain’s establishment, centrist parties — both the conservative Popular Party and the Socialists led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — have long dominated the country’s politics, and the bulk of the electorate appears to be moving away from the extremes toward the center, experts say.
But none of the main Spanish parties has enough support to govern alone. The Popular Party, although expected to take the lead on Sunday, is not expected to win a majority in the 350-seat Parliament, making an alliance essential. The far-right Vox is his most likely partner.
The paradox is that while Vox appears poised to reach the height of its power since it was founded a decade ago, its support may be waning as its positions against abortion rights, climate change policies and LGBTQ rights have scared off many voters.
The idea that the country is becoming more extremist is “a mirage,” said Sergio del Molino, a Spanish author and commentator who has written extensively about Spain and its transformations.
The elections, he said, reflect more the political fragmentation of the establishment parties, caused by the radicalizing events of the financial crisis of 2008 and the quasi-secession of Catalonia in 2017. This has now made alliances, sometimes even with fringe parties, a necessity.
He pointed out “a gap” between the country’s political leadership, which needed to seek electoral support from the extremes to govern, and a “Spanish society that wants to return to the center”.
José Ignacio Torreblanca, Spanish expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, he said that the messy process of coalition building in Spain’s relatively new era of the later two-party system gave fringe parties greater influence and visibility than their actual support.
“This is not a blue and red country at all,” he said.
Others were less convinced. Paula Suárez, 29, a doctor and leftist candidate for local office in Barcelona with the Sumar coalition, said polarization in the country is deep-rooted. “It has to do with the civil war, it’s heritage. Half of Spain is left-wing and half right-wing”, he said, calling the descendants of Vox Franco.
But those who see a predominantly centrist Spain use the same historical reference for their argument. The Spanish electorate’s traditional rejection of extremes, according to some experts, was rooted precisely in their memory of the deadly polarization of Francoism.
Later, through the shared traumas of decades of assassinations by Basque terrorists seeking to break with Spain, the two major establishment parties, the Popular Party and the Socialists, forged a political center and provided a spacious home for most voters.
But recent events have tested the strength of Spain’s immunity to the appeals of the political extremes. Even if it is consistently centrist, Spanish politics today, if not polarized, is certainly pushed to the margins.
A corruption scandal in the Popular Party prompted Vox to split in 2013. Then, Catalonia’s near-secession in 2017 provided jet fuel for nationalists at a time when populist anger against globalization, the European Union and gender identity politics was soaring across Europe.
On the other side of the spectrum, the financial crisis led to the creation of a hard left in 2015, which subsequently forced Mr Sánchez to form a government with this group and cross a red line for himself and the country.
Perhaps of greater consequence for this election, it has also relied on the votes of Basque groups full of former terrorists, giving conservative voters the green light to be more permissive with Vox, Torreblanca said. “This is what made politics in Spain quite toxic,” he said.
After the local elections in May, which dealt a blow to Mr. Sánchez and prompted him to call early elections that Spaniards will vote on Sunday, the conservatives and Vox have already formed alliances across the country.
In some cases, liberals’ worst fears are being confirmed. Outside Madrid, Vox culture officials banned gay or feminist-themed performances. In other towns, they have removed bike lanes and torn down Pride flags.
Ester Calderón, a representative of a national feminist organization in Valencia, where the feminists marched on Thursday, said she fears the country’s Equality Ministry, which is hated by Vox, will be scrapped if the party shares power in a new government.
She attributed the rise of Vox to the progress feminists had made in recent years, saying it had led to a reactionary backlash. “It’s like they came out of the closet,” she said.
At a rally for Yolanda Díaz, the candidate of Sumar, the left-wing umbrella group, an all-female formation spoke about maternity leave, the defense of abortion rights and the protection of women from abuse. The crowd, many cooling fans with Ms. Diaz wearing dark sunglasses, erupted in various calls to action to stop Vox.
“Only if we are strong,” said Ms. Díaz, “will we send Vox to the opposition.”
But members of the conservative People’s Party, which hopes to win an absolute majority and govern without Vox, have sought to reassure moderate voters frightened by the prospect of an alliance with the hard right that they will not allow Vox to push them back.
Xavier Albiol, mayor of the Partit Popular in Badalona, on the outskirts of Barcelona, has assured that “100 percent” there would be no going back on gay rights, women’s rights, climate policies or Spain’s close relationship with Europe if his party were to introduce Vox, which he called 30 years late.
Vox, he said, was only interested in “show” to feed its base and would only “rename” things, like gender-based violence to domestic violence, without altering the substance.
Some experts agreed that if Vox were to enter government, it would do so in a weakened position, as its support appears to be falling.
“The paradox now”, said Mr. Torreblanca, the political analyst, is that just when Sánchez entered the government with the extreme left when it was losing strength, the Popular Party seemed ready to govern with Vox while its support was collapsing. “The story would be that Spain turns to the right. When in fact this is when Vox is at its weakest.”
Recent polls have shown voters drifting away from Vox, and even some of its supporters did not think the party should touch the civil rights protections that Spain’s liberals introduced and that its conservatives supported.
Gay marriage “must remain legal, of course,” said Alex Ruf, 23, a Vox supporter who sat with his girlfriend on a bench in Barcelona’s wealthy Sarrià neighborhood.
Mr. Albiol, mayor of Badalona, has insisted that Spain has been inoculated, and has said that, unlike other European countries, it will continue to be so.
“Because of the historical tradition of a dictatorship for 40 years,” he said, “Spain has become a society where the majority of the population is not at the extremes.”
That was of little consolation to Juana Guerrero, 65, who attended the left-wing Sumar event.
If Vox comes to power, “we will be trampled under their shoes,” he said, crushing an imaginary burr underfoot.
Rachel Chaundler contributed to the report.
