Spain is facing a stark choice between the left and right blocs as it prepares for a snap general election on Sunday that could see the far right winning a place in government for the first time since the country returned to democracy after General Franco’s death almost 50 years ago.
The election, in which the opposition conservative People’s party is expected to finish first but fall short of an absolute majority, has been closely and bitterly fought. Although the PP is topping the polls and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, emerged as the surprise winner of a head-to-head debate last week with Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, the PP’s campaign has had a poor final few days.
Feijóo, who had already been left looking awkward after his claims about the PP’s track record on pensions turned out to be untrue, then made an apparent reference to the makeup of Spain’s deputy prime minister and labour minister, Yolanda Díaz, which was criticised for its sexist tone.
The PP leader is also facing renewed questions over his old friendship with a man who was later convicted of drug trafficking. Speaking on Friday, Feijóo accused his opponents of trying to smear him, adding that when he knew him, the man in question “had been a smuggler [but] never a drug trafficker”.
Sunday’s vote was called by Sánchez after his ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and its smaller coalition partners in the Unidas Podemos alliance did far worse than expected in May’s regional and municipal elections.
According to the polls, the PP, which last governed between 2011 and 2018, is all but assured to win the most votes but forecast to fall short of the 176-seat majority required in Spain’s 350-seat congress. That means any future PP-led government is likely to require the support of the far-right Vox party, which is currently the third biggest grouping in congress, and with which the PP has already formed a handful or regional coalition governments.
Sánchez has sought to portray Sunday’s vote as a showdown between the forces of progress and the forces of reactionary conservatism, claiming that only the PSOE and its allies in Díaz’s new, leftwing Sumar alliance, which include Podemos, can deliver and defend a progressive agenda.
The prime minister has also accused the PP of legitimising Vox’s denial of human-driven climate change and gender-based violence by cutting deals with the far-right party.
“There’s something that’s far more dangerous than Vox, and that’s having a PP that assumes the policies and postures of Vox,” Sánchez said in a recent interview with El País. “And that’s what we’re seeing: a denialism when it comes to social, political and scientific consensus.”
The PP has accused the prime minister and his partners of failing Spaniards through a badly botched reform of sexual offences legislation that has seen more than 100 convicted sex offenders granted early release, and of seeking to defend the political brand it calls “sanchismo” by clinging to power at any cost.
“First and foremost, the PP represents indispensable, vital political change in Spain,” Feijóo told the ABC newspaper on Friday. “The PP is about doing away with sanchismo in Spain … We’re a constitutional party, a party that believes in liberal democracy and the market economy, a party that believes in properly functioning public services, which knows that fiscal pressure can’t keep rising indefinitely, and a party that wants to attract foreign investment and keep Spanish investment in Spain.”
Feijóo has criticised Sánchez’s minority coalition government for being beholden to the Catalan and Basque separatist parties on whom its depends for support in parliament. He has also said he intends to repeal a number of the laws passed by the Sánchez administration, including one on transgender rights and another intended to deal with the legacy of the Franco dictatorship.
An Ipsos poll for La Vanguardia this month found that the economy was the single biggest issue for voters, with 31% of those surveyed putting it at the top of their list. Then came unemployment (10%) and healthcare (9%). Immigration, one of Vox’s favourite talking points, was the most important issue for just 2% of those polled.
Sumar is hoping to win over voters with a green agenda, the promise of a €20,000 (£17,100) “universal inheritance” for young Spaniards when they turn 18 – and blunt warnings about a PP-Vox government.
“On 23 July, Spain will decide between two kinds of government – two coalitions,” Díaz said earlier this month. “The coalition of rights, freedom and progress – a coalition of us and the Socialist party – and the coalition of hatred, which rejects the rights of women and LGBT people, and which pits businesses against workers.”
Vox, meanwhile, is hoping its focus on culture wars, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and push to defend the interests of rural Spain will finally help propel it into government following its breakthrough into national politics four years ago.
“Pedro Sánchez will be remembered as the prime minister who was hard and implacable when it came to honest Spaniards and soft when it came to criminals, the enemies of Spain and foreign elites,” Vox says in its manifesto.
