The elections in Spain, a slowdown for the European right

The general elections on Sunday in Spainin which the rightist People’s Party (PP)Although victorious, he fell far short of his objectives and it is almost impossible to govern, they represent a failure for the right Europe, something rare in recent times, according to analysts.

With less than a year to go before the European elections in June, the inability of the PP and its possible partner Vox, a far-right party, to obtain a majority that allows them to govern “It means that the ultra-right and ultra-conservative wave does not cross the Pyrenees, that there is a sudden stop”, commented political scientist Steven Forti.

“The signal that reaches Europe from Spain is that this wave can be stopped”he declared.

On paper, the PP may have won the elections, finishing with the largest number of deputies (136) ahead of the Socialist Party of the outgoing Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (122), but it has been a “Pyrrhic victory” and even “a defeat from the political point of view”according to this professor from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

And it is that the polls showed the PP as the clear winner, and even capable of reaching an absolute majority in Parliament with the help of Vox, an ally who can be very annoying due to his radical positions, but who is essential for the PP to govern.

Despite the reluctance of the PP, such a situation could have brought the extreme right to power for the first time since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

Shame

Many in Europe already saw Spain following the path of Sweden and Italy last year or Finland this year, countries where right-wing and far-right blocs are now in power. In Rome, it is even the leader of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party, Giorgia Meloni, who heads the government.

Does the disappointment of the PP and Vox in Spain announce a reconsideration in Europe of this strategy of bringing together the so-called traditional right and the extreme right?

For Thierry Chopin, special adviser to the Parisian Jacques Delors Institute, “It is not entirely certain, because the national situations are very different.”

He points out that Vox, which was born in 2013 from a split from the PP, has “a rather shocking speech” and “a form of radicalism”far from “the strategy of trivialization and respectability that we have seen in other European countries” by similar movements.

In fact, Vox has embarrassed the PP and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, throughout the campaign with its extreme positions on issues ranging from its refusal to acknowledge the existence of male violence to its rejection of the rights of the LGTBIQI+ community and its opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

The ideological convergence “it hasn’t worked” in Spain, “unlike Italy or Northern Europe”adds Chopin.

reproaches

The bad result on Sunday provoked, in any case, public recriminations between the two parties.

The general secretary of Vox, Ignacio Garriga, accused on Monday the media close to the PP of carrying out a “demonization and manipulation of the Vox message” in the name of “useful vote”that is, to steal voters.

To assess the impact on a European scale of Sunday’s defeat of Spain’s right-wing parties, Forti believes it is necessary to know whether Sánchez and his radical left ally Sumar will manage to stay in power.

Otherwise, Spain will be forced into new elections, possibly at the beginning of next year, “at the gates of the European elections” of June.

In anticipation of these elections, the European People’s Party (EPP), to which the PP belongs, is currently holding talks with the group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), of which Fratelli d’Italia and Vox are a part, with a view to reaching an agreement in the European Parliament.

The result of Sunday in Spain “This strategy makes this strategy very complicated”says Forty.

“What happened in Spain reinforces my opinion that this alliance” between the right-wing parties “it is not obvious and will not occur” in the European Parliament, adds Chopin.

Source: AFP