Spanish Elections Pose Huge Test for Resurgent Right in Europe

Voters in Spain will head to the polls on Sunday in what could be another major victory for the suddenly resurgent conservative movement in Europe.

In recent decades, Spain has become synonymous with “progressive” governance, and now has some of the most liberal policies anywhere in the world. But an illegal immigration crisis, high unemployment, and general cultural decay as a result of far-left policies have presented Spain’s conservative faction with a new opportunity to win power in Madrid.

Current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called Sunday’s vote following the dismal performance of his Spanish Socialist Workers Party in local elections in May. The rival Popular Party (PP), a traditional Christian Democratic party in Spain, led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is projected to earn the most votes and displace Sánchez.

But it is the performance of another party – Vox – which will be the most interesting to watch on election night. In the May elections, Vox, which unabashedly defends nationalist conservative interests, nearly doubled its vote share to 7.2 percent, handing the party critical negotiating power in forming governing coalitions in many localities.

Polls are now predicting that Vox could earn as much as 15 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections. If those predictions are correct, it would mean that PP would need the support of Vox to form a government – handing the conservative group significant leverage in national politics for the first time.

Vox was first established as a conservative populist alternative party in 2013. For years, many conservatives in Spain and throughout Europe had felt that even the nominally right-wing parties failed to represent their interests.

Instead, European politicians on both sides of the political aisle aligned with each other, big business, and academia. This phenomenon grew worse with the increasing power of the European Parliament, which sought to limit the autonomy of individual countries in the E.U.

Yet instead of the peace and prosperity promised by the international wealth funds who controlled politicians in Brussels and European capitals, local industry and economies were destroyed. European elites became obsessed with trendy new issues like promoting “equity” and “combatting climate change” – forgetting the cultural and economic foundations upon which Western civilization was built.

In response, traditional conservatives throughout Europe have over the past decade or so begun forming new parties that actually fight for their interests. The elites, recognizing the threat to their hold on power, have tried to make “populist” into a bad word and slander these parties as “fascist.”

In Spain, conservatives established Vox in response to the failures of the PP. Jorge Buxade, Vox’s vice president of political action and the head of the party’s delegation to the European Parliament, described Vox’s role as a “defender of the middle classes and equality of the Spanish people.”

Theoretically, Buxade explained, PP should be Vox’s ideological partner, but the reality is much different: “In the European Parliament, Spanish Christian Democrats vote like socialists nearly 90 percent of the time. The PP is co-responsible for the disaster at home.”

The country’s immigration policy is just one example of the disaster Buxade is referring to. Illegal immigration spiked by 51 percent in 2021, before dipping slightly in 2022. Those numbers are in addition to the fact that the Spanish government welcomes nearly everyone as a “refugee.”

Illegal immigration is also impacting Spain’s important tourism industry, as many resort towns have devolved into chaos and violence. Spain has become a haven for North African mafias who often threaten and clash with police, leading many tourists to look elsewhere for their holidays, decimating the local economies of coastal towns.

While Vox has called for much more stringent immigration laws – including mass deportations and a closure of the border – PP sees the issue as only an “efficiency” problem, ignoring the discussion about fundamental failures of open borders policies. In this, Vox has channeled other populist leaders from around the world, including former U.S. President Donald Trump.

PP has also largely embraced the left’s fearmongering about “climate change,” to the detriment of Spain’s rural economy. New water restrictions have decimated farms throughout the country, starving crops during summer months.

PP representatives in the European Parliament also voted for the so-called “Agenda 2030,” which forces E.U. members to “restore nature” on “one-fifth of their land and sea” by the year 2030. For Spain, that will mean liquidating thousands of hectares of farms and the destruction of dams which provide vital irrigation.

While PP has not been a major driver of these failures, they have nonetheless often been complicit in them – leading many voters to shift their support for Vox.

Vox has also found an opening with voters by talking about Spain’s severe unemployment crisis, particularly among young people. According to Eurostat, an E.U. statistics agency, the youth unemployment rate in Spain is the highest in Europe at 14.5 percent – roughly three million people, compared to 1.3 million in Germany, which has a higher population than Spain.

Also according to Eurostat, salaries for young professionals in Spain have not exceeded the minimum wage since 2020.

But PP has opposed most of Vox’s more conservative proposals, including one that would prohibit so-called “gender transition” treatments from being covered under the public healthcare system. Currently, Spain has some of the most liberal transgender laws in the world, and children as young as 16 can legally change their gender without parental consent.

However, Vox’s messaging is clearly breaking through with Spanish voters, as the party has steadily risen in the polls. During the final televised debate, Vox leader Santiago Abascal channeled the frustrations of many Spaniards by accusing Prime Minister Sanchez of “[wanting] to hide the reality: that we are poorer, less free, and more divided.”

It was in that moment, declared ABC commentator Adolfo Garrido, that Abascal won the debate.

Other conservatives throughout Europe clearly recognize the magnitude of Spain’s elections, and are urging voters to turn out in support of Vox. New Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said last week that Spain’s elections will represent “a change in the politics of Europe.”

“It is crucial that a conservative, patriotic alternative be established,” Meloni said. “Europe needs to become aware of its role and influence again to be a political giant instead of a bureaucratic one.”

On July 23, the world will see if the Spanish people will take one more step toward making that vision a reality.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.