Just days after Greece’s pre-election earthquake on May 21, it was Spain’s turn to rock the results of municipal and regional elections that forced the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, to call early parliamentary elections for the end of the year. July. The elections not only demonstrated the retreat of the socialist PSOE and at the same time the overall dominance of the right-wing People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP), but also the simultaneous consolidation of the far-right Vox as a decisive political pole in the country. Vox has, in fact, been quick to announce its willingness to co-manage with the NP not only in local alliances, as has been the case in the past, but probably also in a government scheme if these results are repeated in July. If that happens, Spain will now fully normalize its far right, the very ones that were enchanted as non-existent a few years ago when the Golden Dawn was thrashing in Greece.

But which party is Santiago Abascal’s Vox, founded in 2013 and winning 15% of the vote in the 2019 elections? It is a chauvinistic, socially reactionary, vehemently Catholic and xenophobic party with a strong Euroscepticism that stems from the limitation of national sovereignty imposed by Brussels, as Marine Le Pen in France proclaimed until recently. Vox, however, has grown as a strident voice of opposition to most of the centrifugal forces that characterize Spain today, especially, of course, the case of Catalonia, whose separatist tendencies fueled its ultra-nationalist narrative. And the fact that the current Sánchez government relies heavily on secessionist local parties to govern is anathema to the Iberian far right.

However, Vox often accused the Spanish right itself of being a “cowardly right” (derechita cobarde), guilty of the past and deviating from the correct, conservative path. The truth is that the PP, if shown by Vox, has changed its attitude towards it several times: it has gone from clumsy rejection to forced acceptance at the local level, and finally to almost complete acceptance of its toxic agenda in a series of “national” issues. to prove that he lacks an ultra-right pulse. Although the PP is now trying to distance itself from these extreme trends in the run-up to the national elections by tactically turning to the Center, and with the disappearance of the Ciudadano, i.e. the Spanish River, it is rather taken for granted that it alone cannot govern the country, without the voluntary contribution of Vox .

If the far-right party were to be positioned as a partner of the government, it would undermine Madrid’s already strained relations with Catalonia and the Basque Country.

This coming coalition of the right and the far right, Sanchez said, will take the country back not ten, but fifty years. So back at full speed for a country that has struggled a lot in recent years to finally face the ghosts of a past it has defiantly ignored for decades. The recent “democratic memory” law of the Socialist and Podemith governments contained bold initiatives in this direction; a notable example was the removal of the bones of Franco and the first martyr of Spanish fascism, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, from the Valley of the Fallen megalomania mausoleum in private graves. This not only infuriated Vox, as he was nostalgic for the Frankish past, but was also described by the PP as a dangerous fomentation of civic passions.

On the other hand, Podemos, weakened by internal strife and divisions, as well as by its participation in the government, is electorally crushed, and Vox has long surpassed it, being the third party in electoral power. Some analysts place the two parties at the two ends of the “populist wave” caused by the economic crisis of the last decade. And yes, Podemos was a bulwark against entrenched Spanish bipartisanship when it emerged, like our own inner radical left, on the fury of the moment. But they never undermined the foundations of democracy and institutions, as Vox is now threatening to do. If the far-right party were to position itself as a partner of the government, it is likely that many democratic achievements would be called into question, and this would further revive Madrid’s already strained relations with Catalonia and the Basque Country. Indeed, the risk of dominoes in neighboring Portugal would be more than real, shattering forever the myth of countries that should have been “vaccinated” from the far right because of their long authoritarian past.

Mr. Kostis Kornetis teaches modern history at the Autonomous University of Madrid.