Spain goes to the polls: 50 years later, the extreme right can come to power

Ahead of early general elections to be held on July 23 in Spain, polls point to a right-wing coalition government, which will lose the left-wing coalition government that has been in power for the last three and a half years and will be replaced by the far right for the first time.

After the defeat of the Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), of which the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, is the leader, in the municipal elections on May 28, which should be held at the end of the year in the country, the last week has entered The general elections held on July 23. Although the latest polls were published today, as required by electoral law in Spain, all the polls, except those of the Prime Minister’s Center for Sociological Studies (CIS), gave the Popular Party (PP) the winner of the early general elections. from right. , which is currently the main opposition.

The CIS, for its part, stated that the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the main partner in power, is slightly ahead of the PP.

A FIRST SINCE THE FRANCO ERA

The polls indicate that the PP will come out as the 1st party, but will not reach the 176 seats necessary to maintain a majority and will have to form a coalition with the far-right Vox party to form a government. The political panorama in Spain, established in January 2020 between the first coalition government in the history of democracy, the current PSOE and the ultra-leftist United We Can (UP), shows that as of July 23 a coalition government will be formed .

Two different scenarios are considered for the coalition government.

One scenario is that PP and Vox form a coalition, as the polls indicate. If the electoral results are contrary to the polls, it is expected that the PSOE and Sumar (a new alliance formed by left-wing parties as an alternative to Unidas Podemos), minority in parliamentary arithmetic, will form a government with the foreign support of the separatist parties of the Basque Country and Catalan, as is the case now.

If, as expected, the government changes from a left-wing to a right-wing coalition in Spain, it will be the first time a far-right political party (Vox) has come to power since the death of dictator Francisco Franco on November 20. from 1975.

In order not to form a coalition with Vox, the leader of the PP and candidate for president of the Government, Alberto Núñez Feijoo, frequently asks the PSOE at electoral rallies to abstain in parliament in the motion of no confidence and come to power only as a government in the minority if the first The party arises on July 23. The PSOE, on the other hand, closes the doors to this possibility and argues that the PP shares the same ideology as Vox.

IMMIGRANT AND ANTI-ISLAMIC PARTY

PP and Vox affirm that if they come to power they will repeal the laws of the left-wing coalition government on euthanasia, sexual equality and the fight against violence against women, Democratic Memory (reconciliation with the traces of Francoism, exhumation of mass graves), labor reform and housing issue.

Vox, which has anti-Islamic and irregular immigration policies, also vows to restrict rights in Spain’s 17 autonomous administrations to a more centralized structure and ban separatist political parties in the Basque Country and Catalonia. (AA)