Far Right seizes reins as Spain’s main opposition
Anti-immigrant Vox party sees highest level of support amid feud among leaders of conservative rival
THE leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party has said it could become the country’s “leading force” after opinion polls put them in second place for the first time.
Santiago Abascal’s anti-immigrant movement has enjoyed a surge in support after the implosion of Spain’s main conservative opposition party in a bitter public feud.
He claims that Vox could now be the senior partner in a Right-wing coalition to remove the Left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in elections due by January 2024.
Mr Abascal was speaking yesterday after weekend polls put Vox ahead of the conservative Popular Party (PP) for the first time. It has an estimated support of more than 20 per cent.
The PP, which ruled Spain from 1996 to 2004 and between 2011 and 2018, has been plunged into its worst crisis after its Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, last week accused the party leadership of spying on her. Several thousand people demonstrated outside the PP’S national headquarters on Sunday in her support, demanding the resignation of party leader Pablo Casado.
Mr Abascal claimed he took no satisfaction from the PP’S meltdown, claiming that Right-of-centre voters needed a broad spectrum of options.
“We are worried about the weakness of the collective that must offer an alternative to one of the worst governments of all time,” he said, describing Mr Sánchez’s ruling Left-wing coalition as “illegitimate”. He accused it of relying on “enemies of Spain” including communists, Catalan separatists and the political heirs of now-defunct Basque terrorist organisation Eta.
Vox, which wants to expel immigrants without legal status and ban abortion, became Spain’s third force in the most recent general election of
‘The separatism and immigration issues connect under the Vox party’s Spaniards first message’
2019. It won 15 per cent of the national vote and became the first Spanish far-right party to gain parliamentary representation in almost four decades.
“Spain was an exception in Europe with no major far-right force until we saw the rise of Vox in 2019 as a response to the Catalan separatism movement,” political analyst Kiko Llaneras told The Daily Telegraph.
Vox’s proposal of banning separatist parties and scrapping Spain’s systems of devolved regional government chimes with a renewed sense of Spanish Rightwing nationalism, Mr Llaneras said.
He added that pledges to expel illegal migrants and foreigners convicted of crimes would be popular in areas with high levels of non-european immigration. “The separatism and immigration issues connect under the party’s ‘Spaniards first’ message,” he said.
Vox has also been an enthusiastic promoter of culture wars in Spanish politics, claiming that legislation to protect women from male violence and the removal of Franco-era symbols are deliberate ways of dividing Spaniards along gender and ideological lines.
Vox says it wants the law to protect equally “all victims of intra-family violence without discriminating by sex”.
The party says it supports women through its stance on rape, for which it wants life sentences to be introduced, and blames immigrants for being behind a disproportionate number of sexual assaults. It has also opposed a government draft bill to make it easier for transsexuals to change their gender identity, claiming it would “destroy Christian civilisation” by imposing a “totalitarian ideology based on gender”.
Although Vox’s star is rising among Right-wing voters, a poll published in the newspaper said yesterday that nearly 60 per cent of Spaniards were worried by the prospect of Vox entering power.