Elections in Spain | The favorite right, the far right in ambush to return to power

(Madrid) Spain is feverishly awaiting the result of legislative elections on Sunday, scrutinized throughout Europe, whose big favorite is the right-wing opposition, but which could also bring the far right to government for the first time since the end of Francoism.

Turnout, which had jumped 2.5 points at midday, was down sharply at 12 p.m. (Eastern time) at 53.12% against 56.85% in the last legislative elections of 2019, voters having rather mobilized in the morning due to the heat.

However, this figure does not include the 2.47 million people, out of 37.5 million voters, who voted by post – a record number due to the fact that this election is taking place, for the first time, in the middle of summer.

Polls will close at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. EST), but it will take about an hour for the first partial results to be released.

Given the winner in the polls, the leader of the People’s Party (PP, right) Alberto Núñez Feijóo said on Sunday that he hoped that Spain would “begin a new era”.

This election is “very important […] for the world and for Europe,” said Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has been in power for five years.

This election is attracting unusual interest abroad due to the possible coming to power of an alliance between the traditional right and the ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative Vox party, which rejects the existence of gender violence, criticizes “climate fanaticism” and is very openly anti-LGBT and anti-abortion.

Such a scenario would mark the return to power of the far right in Spain for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975, almost half a century ago.

“Repercussions across the continent”

With the 2024 European elections approaching, the swing to the right of the fourth largest economy in the euro zone, after Italy last year, would constitute a stinging setback for the European left, all the more symbolic since Spain currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

In a column published Sunday in the French daily The worldthe former British Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown estimated that an entry of Vox into the government – ​​synonymous, according to him, with “capitulation of the Spanish conservatives vis-a-vis the extreme right” – “would have repercussions on all the continent”.

All the opinion polls published until Monday considered a victory for the PP of Mr. Feijóo, 61, almost certain, but the fact that their publication was banned for the five days preceding the election calls for caution.

Mr. Feijóo’s objective is to win an absolute majority of 176 deputies in the Chamber of Deputies, so that the PP can govern alone. But not a poll has considered such a score and the PP should therefore resort to an alliance.

His only potential partner is Vox, a party born in 2013 from a split in the PP, with which he already governs in three of the 17 regions of the country. However the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, warned that the price of his support would be a participation in the government.

“Not ideal”

“A coalition government between the PP and Vox would be beneficial, because it would be dedicated to making Spain better, not to making everyone happy,” Brayan Sánchez, a 27-year-old computer scientist who voted in Barcelona (northeast), told AFPTV.

An analysis rejected by Laia Ricard, a 46-year-old Catalan actress, who felt that such a coalition would be “disastrous at all levels” for her region, Vox being a strong supporter of Catalan independence.

Mr. Feijóo, who described the PP as “a reformist center-right party”, remained vague about his intentions until the end, admitting however on Friday, in an interview with the daily El Mundo, that a coalition government with Vox “is not ideal”.

Given beaten after the rout of the left in local elections in May, which had convinced him to call this early poll, Mr. Sánchez, 51, has made Vox a scarecrow in order to play on the fear of the far right.

Denouncing “the tandem formed by the extreme right and the extreme right” and playing the European card, he considered that a PP/Vox coalition government “would not only be a setback for Spain” in terms of rights, “but also a serious setback for the European project”.

For him, the only alternative is to maintain in power the current left-wing coalition, set up in 2020, between his socialist party and the radical left, represented by the Communist Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz.

“For people of my generation, these are the most important elections […] It is the next decade that is at stake, ”warned Sunday M^me Díaz, whose Sumar formation brings together about fifteen parties.