Far right victory in Andalusia
FOR THE first time since the death of Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, a far-right party has gained significant representation in Spain.
On Sunday night, the anti-immigrant party Vox shocked political observers when it won 12 out of 109 seats in the left-wing bastion of Andalusia — approximately 11 per cent of the popular vote.
The vote may bring an end to 36 years of uninterrupted Socialist Party rule in the southern Spanish region and act as a sign of things to come in 2019, a key election year.
Vox is a nationalist movement founded in 2013 by breakaway members of Spain’s conservative Popular Party. Before Sunday night, the party had been a marginal political actor but saw a sharp increase in support in 2017 after a terrorist attack in Barcelona and the illegal independence referendum in Catalonia.
Some of the main pillars of Vox’s political programme include building massive walls at Spain’s land borders with Morocco, increasing deportations, and immediately suspending Catalonia’s home rule.
After hundreds of migrants climbed over Spain’s heavily enforced border in June, Vox’s president, Santiago Abascal, echoing US President Donald Trump, tweeted: “We urgently need an impassible wall and to expel the invaders immediately.”
While Vox’s leadership has expressed its distrust of certain immigrant groups such as Muslims, it is not outwardly antisemitic and has voiced its strong support for Israel.
And, unlike other European farright forces, Vox does support continued European Union membership, while also calling for Spain to “recover its weight in Europe and the world.”
But French far-right leader Marine Le Pen did tweet her “warmest” congratulations to her “friends from Vox” after the results from the Andalusian elections were announced.
While the party remains far from winning a majority in the regional assembly, the chances of it being the part of a ruling coalition are strong.
The Socialist Party won the most support in the election but may not receive the backing it needs from other parties, leaving the left just short of a majority.
A right-wing coalition is now the likeliest outcome, with Vox potentially governing alongside the Popular Party and Ciudadanos, itself another relatively new force on Spain’s political scene that is strongly opposed to Catalan separatism. However, whether the Popular Party and Ciudadanos would want to align themselves with Vox was not clear.
The party hopes that the momentum from the Andalusian elections will carry forward to May 2019. This will be when Spain holds municipal, regional and European elections.
The shaky political situation at a national level could also trigger general elections before they are due in 2020.
“The Reconquista [reconquest] is starting in Andalusia and will spread to the rest of Spain,” the party wrote on its Twitter account on Sunday night.
The term Reconquista is used to describe the historical period in which Christians gained control of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims.
Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez responded to the results by saying they needed to fight far-right attitudes.
He said on Monday: “The results of Andalusia reinforce our commitment to defending the constitution and democracy in the face of fear.”
Its leaders expressed a distrust of immigrant groups