Europe’s liberal and moderate establishment breathed easier on Monday after Spain’s nationalist Vox party stalled in Sunday’s general election, halting a surge in far-right parties across the continent that seemed poised to swamp even the progressive bastion of Spain.
“A relief for Europe,” read a front-page headline in the liberal La Repubblica in Italy, where far-right leader Giorgia Meloni became prime minister last year and this month predicted in a video message to her Vox allies that “the hour has come for patriots.”
But instead of Vox becoming the first far-right party to take power in Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship almost 50 years ago, as many polls had predicted, it sank. The party’s poor results in the election also toppled the underperforming center-right Conservatives, who needed Vox’s support to form a government.
As a result, no single party or coalition immediately gained enough parliamentary seats to govern, plunging Spain into crisis known political mess and to breathe new life into Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who just a few days ago appeared to be dying. Suddenly, Mr. Sánchez seemed best placed to cobble together another progressive government in the coming weeks to avoid snap elections.
“This democracy will find the formula for governability,” he told leaders of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, according to El País on Monday.
What is clear for now is that Spanish voters have rebuked the Vox party, which lost almost half of its seats in parliament, signaling a clear desire to move away from the extremes and back towards the political center.
Pro-European politicians saw the result as an encouraging sign that the center would also win next year’s European elections, in a setback for the EU far-right forces that have made gains in Sweden, Finland, Germany, France and Italy as well as in the United States.
Vox’s campaign reproduced near-uniform far-right, nationalist views held in other countries, with opposition to migration and LGBTQ rights, promotion of traditional Christian values, and assertion of nationalism in the face of European Union interference.
But many of these issues failed to attract or even frighten Spanish voters, and the country’s election results were at odds with European political currents.
Instead, the results made it clear that Vox’s rise had more to do with the nationalist response to an explosion of secessionist enthusiasm in Spain’s Catalonia region in 2017. During his five-year tenure, Mr. Sánchez managed to defuse this problem by granting pardons to the secessionists and reducing penalties.
For this He paid a political price among the Spaniards who were annoyed with the Catalans, but as long as the issue lingered, so was Vox. Ultimately, the party’s message found significantly fewer followers in this election than in 2019.
“Catalonia has been one of the main drivers of Vox’s rise,” said Juan Rodríguez Teruel, political scientist at the University of Valencia.
However, Sunday’s results also showed that the Catalan question was not quite dead. On Monday, it became clear that the region’s small pro-independence parties could well hold the key to establishing a new government for Mr. Sánchez, just as they did in the last vote.
Crucially, these parties include the pro-independence allies Carles Puigdemontthe former regional president of Catalonia who led the failed secessionist movement and is still on the run, living in self-imposed exile in Belgium.
“Puigdemont could make Sánchez president,” read a headline in Spanish daily El Mundo.
A complicated game of cat and mouse immediately began on Monday when Spanish prosecutors issued a new arrest warrant for Mr Puigdemont.
“One day you are critical to the formation of a Spanish government, the next day Spain is ordering your arrest,” he tweeted Monday.
Gabriel Rufián, MP for the Republican Left of Catalonia, a pro-Catalan pro-independence party, said in a pre-election interview that Mr Sánchez had no choice but to take on the secessionists.
“Four years ago, during an election campaign, Sánchez promised to look for Puigdemont in Waterloo and arrest him. He could not. It was absurd,” he said. “Months later he sat down with us at the negotiating table. It was political pressure because he had to run his country.”
On Sunday night, after the vote, he simply summed up his message to “Either Catalonia or Vox”. But his party also lost support when the Spanish turned to the centre.
It remains to be seen what kind of revival the Catalonia question would bring to Spain, the secessionists and Vox.
Vox was founded a decade ago when its leader Santiago Abascal split from the Popular Party, long a big centre-right tent that included monarchists, libertarian pro-same-sex marriage supporters, ultra-conservative Catholics and Spaniards who abhorred the north’s pro-independence movements.
The party believed in a united Spain; However, in the decades following the Franco regime, open expressions of this view—even waving the national flag—were considered taboo signs of nationalism.
But spurred on by Catalonia’s quest for independence, Vox was more than willing to cross that line. A rush of Spaniards followed.
The nationalists in Vox, who called for the Catalan movement to be crushed by any means, gained support. By the 2019 elections, they had grown to become the third largest party in the country.
In a brief speech Sunday night after his party’s defeat, a dejected Mr Abascal admitted that Mr Sánchez now had the support to block a new government and that he could also be re-sworn in with the support of the far left and separatist parties, or what he called “support for communism, coup separatism and terrorism”.
“We will resist,” he said, saying his party was ready to go into opposition or “repeat the elections.”
However, analysts said snap elections are likely to only further weaken Vox. The influence had shifted back to Catalonia, namely to the harder Party Together for Catalonia, founded by Mr Puigdemont.
“We will not make Sánchez president for nothing,” said Míriam Nogueras, a leader of the Together for Catalonia party, on Sunday evening at its headquarters.
Other members of her party who have been pardoned by Mr Sánchez have indicated that further amnesties and a referendum on independence may be the price they are asking for.
But left-wing politicians and locals wary of Vox feared rising tensions with Catalonia were just what the far-right needed for a resurgence.
“We want dialogue with Catalonia. We want an agreement. Go out and vote for dialogue, for a deal, for a better Catalonia,” Yolanda Díaz, leader of the far-left Sumar party, which won 31 seats, said at a rally in Barcelona on Friday night.
On Monday, her party approached Mr Puigdemont and the Together for Catalonia party to persuade them to support the government.
On the eve of Sunday’s election in Barcelona, just one could be seen along a main thoroughfare covered in Catalan flags during the 2017 protests
“The situation in Spain and the outbreak of the extreme right is a consequence of what happened here in Catalonia,” said Joaquim Hernandez, 64.
“By not holding the referendum, you maintain tension and confrontation, which benefits the pro-independence parties and Vox,” he said, “because unfortunately Catalonia is an argument with which the nationalists win votes.”
Rachel Chaundler contributed to the coverage from Madrid.
