Far right surges as crises threaten Sanchez: Could Vox lead Spain?

Madrid, Spain – “What I really hate about [Prime Minister Pedro] Sanchez is how keen he is to allow more migrants into our country,” said Alberto Munoz, who wears the red and gold wristband of Vox party supporters.

The 24-year-old computer programmer from Barcelona is among a growing group of young Spanish people who are attracted to the far-right, anti-immigration party.

Eight years ago, Vox was a tiny party on the fringes of Spanish politics. But polls suggested it is getting closer to power as Spain heads to snap elections on November 29.

To reach a parliamentary majority, 176 seats are needed. According to a recent survey by the leading centre-left newspaper El Pais, the conservative People’s Party (PP) and Vox – whose support is predicted to double from the last elections in 2023 – would secure 198 seats. If the PP forms a coalition with Vox, it would be the first time the hard right would return to power in Spain since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.

In the most recent elections in 2023, the PP won the most votes but not enough to lead on its own, and it did not enter a coalition with Vox. Sanchez of the Socialist Workers’ Party instead formed a government with the help of the Catalan nationalist party, Together for Catalonia.

Since then, the PP has formed four regional governments with Vox, and the parties share power in about 100 councils. A coalition between them now would likely see Sanchez defeated.

“There is hope for Spain with these elections. We will fight for victory and to convince Spaniards we are worth voting for,” Jose Antonio Fuster, national spokesman for Vox, told Al Jazeera. “But the PP cannot make the same mistakes as 2023 and must not start dividing up ministries until we have won.”

Sanchez’s party is predicted to win 112 seats in November, down from 121 three years ago.

If the Socialists lose, it would spell the end of one of the last left-wing governments left in Europe after advances for the far right in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Finland as populism sweeps Europe.

Steven Forti, an expert in the far right who lectures in contemporary history at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said, like other far-right parties in Europe and Latin America, Vox distances itself from the Franco dictatorship.

Santiago Abascal, the Vox leader, once told the Spanish parliament that Sanchez’s government was the “worst for the past 80 years” – implying the Franco dictatorship was better.

“It is dog whistle politics – you do not make an explicit reference to the dictatorship. Vox is like other far-right parties in that respect,” Forti told Al Jazeera.

“Young people are attracted to Vox by a feeling of rebellion against the established parties, nationhood and antimigrant feeling. If the polls are right, they will be in power with the PP, but what matters is what ministries they control.”

Vox is the only party that has substantially increased its support. A survey for RTVE, the state broadcaster, projected that the far-right party would increase its seats in parliament from 33 to 65 while it indicated the PP’s support had not risen and all left-wing parties had lost support.

Antonio Alonso, a lecturer in international relations at the University CEU San Pablo in Madrid, said right-wing parties were more stable than their badly divided opponents.

“What is key is that the far left is split into so many different groups and it will be hard to mobilise them as one front together. Meanwhile, the right with the PP and Vox is more unified,” he told Al Jazeera.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the PP leader, plans to play on voters’ anger over corruption scandals that have hit Sanchez.

“This is an election between corruption and decency, between decline and prosperity, between a government that aspires only to survive and a country that is thinking about its future,” he told reporters after Sanchez announced the snap elections.

He also pledged to build 200,000 homes each year and cut taxes.

Fired up by a housing crisis that has seen tens of thousands of people protest across Spain, Sanchez called the vote in an audacious gamble to rally support and confound the polls.

It was the eviction of 87-year-old Maria del Carmen Abascal from her Madrid home, a flat she had lived in for seven decades, which inflamed public opinion and prompted activists to camp out in central Madrid and other cities. Known across Spain as Maricarmen, she died this month after the protests.

When two government bills designed to protect people like Abascal were defeated in parliament, it prompted huge demonstrations, and Sanchez decided to capitalise on this tide of anger and call the elections.

Observers said Sanchez hopes the strength of feeling over the housing crisis might eclipse anger over corruption scandals involving members of his family, the perceived mishandling of the Ceuta migration crisis and an amnesty for Catalan separatists who led a failed independence bid in 2017.

The two defeated housing measures to protect tenants from eviction were later passed by the acting government.

“They protect the most vulnerable and, in some way, begin to bring order to what is currently a deeply dysfunctional market that does not operate according to the logic of supply and demand because of rampant speculation,” Sanchez told reporters.

However, even though Sanchez is renowned as a clever political operator, this gamble may not be enough. Even before Sanchez’s announcement of the elections, the Socialists had trailed in almost every opinion poll for months with most voters saying they would back the PP and Vox.