Spanish ocialists set to be humbled in tomorrow's election

2023-07-22

Franco’s ghost haunts Spain as the hard-Right makes a comeback: With the ruling socialists set to be humbled in tomorrow’s election, how a new breed of young voter is turning back the clock

Spain’s socialist government faces crushing defeat in this year’s general election
It is threatened by conservative People’s Party and the hard-Right Vox party

Every June for years, a rainbow-striped banner celebrating Pride Week had been draped over the long balcony of the magnificent city hall in Valladolid, northern Spain.

But last month it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, flying from flagpoles on the baroque-style building overlooking one of Europe’s most exquisite squares was the national yellow-and-red flag of Spain, alongside those of the city itself and the surrounding province of Castile and Leon.

The reason for the banner’s disappearance was that, a month earlier, the Right wing swept to power here in local elections, dethroning the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

‘It was the first sign of a culture change in our city, which is popular during Pride Week, with LGBTQ+ visitors from across the world,’ Valladolid’s defeated Left-wing mayor, Oscar Santiago, told the Mail this week.

‘It was the same all over Spain. Socialists were thrown out almost everywhere in this May’s local elections . . . in Seville, Andalusia, Oviedo. And down came the rainbow flags or banners.’

The reason for the banner’s disappearance was that, a month earlier, the Right wing swept to power here in local elections

Tomorrow, this fervently Catholic country is expected to shift even farther to the Right in an extraordinary political shake-up.

Spain is to have a general election and Mr Santiago’s ruling PSOE faces a crushing defeat. Right-wing MPs in Madrid’s parliament, the Cortes, stand on the brink of power and throwing the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, out of office.

The polls are narrow, but an alliance between the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the hard-Right Vox party is predicted to get more votes than the increasingly unpopular socialists.

It would mean the hard-Right gaining a share of power here for the first time since General Franco’s fascist rule ended in the mid-1970s.

Latest predictions are that PP and Vox may win more than 180 of the 350 seats in the Cortes, exceeding by four the total necessary to win them an absolute majority.

Many Spanish would be pleased to see Sanchez ousted as prime minister. He is accused, on dramatic political posters plastered this week on streets all over Spain, of lying to his people during five years of leadership.

Right-wing MPs in Madrid’s parliament, the Cortes, stand on the brink of power and throwing the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez (pictured), out of office

An alliance between the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the hard-Right Vox party is predicted to get more votes than the increasingly unpopular socialists. Pictured: Vox Party Leader, Santiago Abascal

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this resurgence of the Right is that huge numbers of the young are going along with it, even though Sanchez’s party is associated with policies you would have expected them to approve of — policies deeply sympathetic to transgender rights, mass migration and climate change.

Much of this support from the under-30s is down to soaring youth unemployment and the effects of immigration when almost one young Spaniard in three is jobless. But young and old are also concerned about what they claim is the Left’s destruction of national identity and traditional families in this fiercely proud nation.

The first sign that big changes were afoot in Spain came last year in regional elections when a PP/Vox coalition won against Left-wing parties in northern Spain’s Castile and Leon province, where Valladolid is the biggest city.

In this year’s local elections, Sanchez’s socialists were ejected from Valladolid itself and — astonishingly — 140 other towns and cities in Spain. Consolidating their success, PP and Vox then formed local pacts to run huge swathes of the country between them.

Prime minister Sanchez has dubbed the contentious PP-Vox deals ‘an extreme Right-wing tandem’. Like-minded politicians have said they threaten nearly half a century of democracy introduced following the 36-year dictatorship of General Franco on his death in 1975.

Valladolid was a notorious sanctuary for fascist supporters in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, when Franco-led nationalists eventually won power after a bitterly drawn-out conflict against communists lasting three years.

It would mean the hard-Right gaining a share of power here for the first time since General Franco’s (pictured) fascist rule ended in the mid-1970s

Like-minded politicians have said they threaten nearly half a century of democracy introduced following the 36-year dictatorship of General Franco (pictured) on his death in 1975

In the 1980s, Left-wing students nicknamed the city Fachadolid — ‘fascist place’ in Spanish — because of its suspected links to Franco-era Right-wing cells which, terrifyingly, are thought to have lingered on for decades.

A monument commemorating a loyal supporter of the dictator, Fascist politician Onesimo Redondo, stood on a hill outside the city until 2016 and could be seen for miles around. It was pulled down on the orders of the Madrid government in an attempt to eradicate statues and plaques linked to the Franco days.

In Valladolid this week, those picking up leaflets, balloons and sweets at PP and Vox campaign stands in Santiago Street near the city hall insisted they weren’t voting for fascism or anything like it.

They said they simply wanted to stop Left-wing and EU-inspired diktats covering uncontrolled immigration, green curbs on motorists, Pride marches and rainbow flags, which they claim are changing the society they love.

One subject that came up time and again was a controversial law introduced by Sanchez’s party to toughen penalties for sexual crimes. Popularly known as the ‘Only Yes means Yes’ legislation, it attempted to overhaul the criminal code by making consent, or lack of it, the key factor in determining assault cases.

But mistakes were made in the rapidly drawn-up law and defence lawyers found loopholes in favour of sexual offenders — a mistake for which Mr Sanchez has asked survivors ‘for forgiveness’.

A monument commemorating a loyal supporter of the dictator, Fascist politician Onesimo Redondo (pictured), stood on a hill outside the city until 2016 and could be seen for miles around

The errors, according to government figures, allowed 104 rapists to challenge convictions so they were released from prison. Another 978 sexual abusers had their sentences reduced, an outcome that caused national uproar.

At the PP stand in Santiago Street, we talked on Wednesday to two law students, 18-year-old Jaime Esteban and his friend Marcos Rincon, 19, who said they were outraged at the ‘yes means yes’ fiasco. They insisted that ‘a lot of our age group’ are hoping to ‘vote out’ the socialists.

‘It is time for a change because Sanchez and the Left are bad for everyone in Spain, young and old,’ added Marcos. He said the ‘yes means yes’ law ‘allowed rapists out of prison, it let them go free. It was not only women but also young people who were horrified at that.’

Bearded grandfather Mariano, 65, was there with his grandchildren Ariadna, 15, and her brother Thiago, 13, who nodded enthusiastically when I asked them if they would vote for PP when they were old enough.

The teenagers listened intently as Mariano asserted: ‘Sanchez has lied to the Spanish people. That is why there is a swing to Right-wing parties here. We are not ashamed to vote for them. It is an anti-Sanchez feeling. We are all sick of him and don’t like his policies.’

At the Vox campaign stand farther along Santiago Street was recently widowed Begona, a former wine business owner with finely coiffured grey hair. She was happy to voice her support for the Right.

At the PP stand in Santiago Street, we talked on Wednesday to two law students, 18-year-old Jaime Esteban (left) and his friend Marcos Rincon (right), 19, who said they were outraged at the ‘yes means yes’ fiasco

Bearded grandfather Mariano (centre), 65, was there with his grandchildren Ariadna (right), 15, and her brother Thiago (left), 13, who nodded enthusiastically when I asked them if they would vote for PP when they were old enough

‘And it isn’t just people of my age who want change,’ she said. ‘My 19-year-old son is going to vote for Vox, too. I like the feeling of national unity it promotes. I don’t agree with all the policies. There should not be a total abolition of abortion, as some of its politicians have suggested. But I like most of what this party is hoping to do.’

Elena Diez, a nurse in her 50s, was equally sure that Vox is perfect for her. ‘I want a change from the Left wing,’ she said. ‘I don’t want a culture of handouts paid for by taxpayers, which is what they promote. We need people to contribute for health and education. I don’t see any problem with a PP-Vox government.’

So substantial is Vox’s following of proudly nationalist 18 to 24-year-olds, especially women, they have become the largest single group among its supporters.

A 20-year-old student called Pablo Cano was widely quoted in the Spanish media this week as saying he wants a win for Vox ‘because the Spanish people must come first, then the rest’.

He was attending a Vox rally in Malaga, southern Spain, where the party’s leader Santiago Abascal told a crowd of followers: ‘It’s a miracle you are here. Considering what (the Left) are saying about us . . . considering how they insult us. How they twist everything you feel . . . turning it into a criminal thought, a hate crime.’

As he listened to chants of ‘Es-pan-ya’ from the crowd, Abascal was clearly on a roll and relishing his chance of victory this weekend.

So substantial is Vox’s following of proudly nationalist 18 to 24-year-olds, especially women, they have become the largest single group among its supporters. Pictured: Valladolid, Spain

One of the most contentious of his Vox party’s promises is a ban on hormone therapy, puberty blockers and sex-change surgery for gender-questioning children. The party says the current Spanish laws, which allow these invasive treatments, are the consequence of ‘activists brainwashing youngsters into believing they are a boy born in a girl’s body or the other way round’.

Its manifesto leaflet adds: ‘This leads teenagers with low self-esteem to believe they can change their gender and it will help solve their difficulties.’

Another proposal is that abortion clinics should make it obligatory to take images of the foetus and offer women the chance to listen to its heartbeat before they decide to terminate a pregnancy.

The party also pledges to repeal a law cementing LGBTQ+ rights and rejects rising temperature worries as ‘climate fanaticism’. Its politicians are alleged to have used terms such as ‘Muslim invasion’ in campaigns for tighter border controls to stop uncontrolled illegal migration to Europe.

When I spoke to Fernando Álvarez, a retired businessman and volunteer at the Vox stand in Valladolid, he insisted: ‘The Left’s transgender laws don’t protect women. No party does that better than ours.’

Whatever the truth of this, much more controversially, Vox politicians have claimed that rainbow banners of the sort once displayed on Valladolid city hall are linked to promoting paedophilia.

The party also pledges tighter border controls to stop uncontrolled illegal migration to Europe. Pictured: Migrants disembark from a Spanish Maritime Rescue vessel in the Port of Arguineguin on the Canary Island of Gran Canaria in July

Pictured: Migrants rest on the pier after disembarking from a ‘cayuco’ (wooden boat) following a rescue operation on July 4, 2023 at the port of Los Cristianos, in the municipality of Arona, in the south of Tenerife

In Spanish cities where the Right now rule, the LGBTQ+ symbols are disappearing from show on public buildings, funding for pro-migrant groups is being curtailed and the hiring of state-paid gender equality officers is already winding down.

In one Cantabrian town, the recently elected PP-Vox council last month censored a screening of the film Lightyear, based on the character from Toy Story, for showing a kiss between a lesbian couple in one scene. The animation, popular with children, is already barred in several Muslim countries.

As for Mr Santiago, the deposed Socialist Workers’ Party mayor in Valladolid, he is worried that a full-scale attack on Spain’s LGBTQ+ community is under way. Already, gay couples in the city have complained that they are afraid to kiss in a bar or hold hands in public.

‘I am proud to be the first mayor in this city to marry a gay couple, two men in 2015. I oversaw the weddings of many more until I was voted out of office in May,’ he says.

‘Spain has a difficult history, with the 1930s Civil War between the Left and Fascists. It is as though we are back in those frightening times now.

‘We are going back to the concept that excludes certain groups of people from society. If you take bullfighting or being a Catholic, they are good. Those who oppose this cruel way of killing animals or question the overreach of religion, that is bad.

‘The Spanish Right, the wealthy and the powerful, are still steeped in Francoism. Even now, after all these years, they cannot forget this dictator or fascism.’

Mr Santiago is an educated, erudite man and a delight to meet. But the fact is, he may be on the wrong side of modern history.

A third of Europe’s nations — from Sweden to Greece, Finland to Poland — have already moved to the Right and others threaten to do so, as people rebel at the ballot box against Left-wing politics.

Tomorrow, it appears that Spain, despite its vivid background of fascism and a blood-curdling civil war, will do the same.

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