2023-07-24 18:25:31
Las Sunday general elections in Spainin which the rightist Popular Party (PP)although victorious, remained very far from its objectives and it is almost impossible to governrepresent a failure for the European right, 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 Voxa match of extreme rightto 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 told the AFP news agency.
on paper, the PP may have won the electionsfinishing 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 surveys gave the PP as the clear winnerit is included capable of attaining 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, a situation like this could have brought the far right to power by first time since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
A campaign with moments of 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 They 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.
The DException of the PP and Vox in Spain announces 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 safe, because national situations are very different.”
Notes that Vox, which was born in 2013 from a split from the PPhas “a rather scandalizing discourse” 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 Feijóothroughout the campaign with his extreme positions on issues ranging from their refusal to acknowledge the existence of sexist violence until rejection of the rights of the LGTBIQI+ community and his opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
The ideological convergence “has not worked” in Spain“unlike Italy or northern Europe,” adds Chopin.
crossed reproaches
He bad result on Sunday provoked, in any case, public recriminations between the two parties.
He Vox secretary general, Ignacio Garriga, accused on Monday to the media close to the PP to carry out a “demonization and manipulation of the Vox message” in the name of the “useful vote”, that is, to steal voters.
For assess the impact at European level of the defeat of the right-wing parties in Spain on Sunday, Forti considers necessary to know if Sánchez and his radical left ally Sumar will manage to stay in power.
Otherwise, Spain will be forced to new electionspossibly at the beginning of next year, “at the gates of the European elections” in 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.
He Sunday’s result in Spain “complicates this strategy a lot”says Forti.
“What happened in Spain reinforces my opinion that this alliance” between the right-wing parties “is not obvious and will not occur” in the European Parliament, adds Chopin.
First steps in trying to form a government
The president of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, and his conservative rival, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, took the first steps this Monday to resolve the puzzle of forming a governmentafter the elections on Sunday did not give anyone an easy chance.
The fourth European economy seemed headed for a political blockade after on Sunday, defying all the polls that predicted his debacle, Sánchez managed to limit the advance of the right-wing opposition.
Both candidates met their parties the day after election night to discuss strategies and possible alliances.
Feijóo’s Popular Party (PP, conservatives) was the winner with 136 seats out of a total of 350 in the Congress of Deputies, while the far-right Vox party, his only potential ally, got 33.
However, they add up to only 169 seats, far from the absolute majority of 176 that allows the formation of a government.
On the other side, Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) won 122 seats and Sumar, his radical left ally, 31, but both are in a better position to win support from Basque and Catalan regionalist parties.
Sánchez denied that he was looking for a new call for elections, so the alliances that can be formed or the support that is lost along the way will be key.
With information from AFP.-
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