The party - whose supporters are primarily 25- to 44-year-old middle- to middle-upper-class men, according to Spain’s Center for Sociological Investigations - also employs language associated with Franco’s dictatorship and the Spanish age of conquest.
Most essential to its platform is its call for Spanish unity. Vox stokes fear of immigrants, demonizes feminists and urges a return to Spanish values in a country corrupted by “left-wing extremists.” In the years since its founding, the party has adopted the populist playbook. Vox was founded in 2013 when a few members of the Popular Party broke off to form their own party with a tougher stance on Basque and Catalan nationalism.Īt the time, the party was small and wielded little influence, unlike nationalist, anti-immigrant right-wing movements that were spreading across Europe.īut in December, Vox gained a footing in politics when it won 11% of the vote in Andalusian regional elections, surpassing expectations and helping to oust the Socialists who had held power there for 36 years. Socialist Sánchez formed a minority government with the backing of Catalan independentistas, leading his critics to accuse him of being too friendly with the separatists.īut the same separatists failed to back his February budget, forcing him to call elections. Rajoy was ousted in June following a vote of no confidence regarding a corruption scandal in his party. “You have to vote for Vox, because around a year ago Mariano Rajoy abandoned us,” said José Lopez, 29, a Barcelona resident at the Thursday event, referring to the Popular Party prime minister. In response, the Spanish government, then led by the conservative Popular Party, fired the Catalan parliament, wrested control of the region, began arresting the movement’s leaders and called for fresh regional elections in December.Īt the time, separatists and some on the left criticized the Spanish government for acting with impunity.īut Spaniards on the right didn’t think the Popular Party went far enough.įormer supporters of the Popular Party turned toward alternative parties like Vox and Citizens - a center-right group known for its firm stance against Catalan independence - who reject negotiation with separatists and call for another takeover of the region.
While the referendum only drew 40% of eligible voters, 90% of them voted to secede, and three weeks later, Carles Puigdemont, the region’s president at the time, declared independence - leading to Spain’s deepest constitutional crisis since its return to democracy. In the background of the election is the Catalan independence crisis, which came to a head in October 2017 when separatists held an independence referendum deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish government. A coalition government would cement a new era of political fragmentation in Spanish politics, which had reliably seen a parliament ruled by the conservative People’s Party or the Socialist Workers Party since the country’s transition to democracy following the death of Franco in 1975. “It’s very contested, very polarized, with a big question mark over where voters are going to go with … national identity, with identification in relation to Catalonia.”Īnalysts predict that no single party will gain a majority, meaning that parties will need to make coalitions in order to form a government. “It’s a very emotional election,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Madrid. Questions of national unity and identity have defined this spring’s general election - Spain’s third in four years - which Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called after failing to pass a national budget in February. The setting was fraught with symbolism: Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia, is the heart of a regional secessionist drive that prompted an angry backlash of Spanish nationalism and helped lead to the rise of Vox.
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