The Far-Right Is On the Brink of Power in Spain – Here's What Is at Risk

A host of progressive laws such as expanded gender equality rights and a revamped definition of sexual consent passed in Spain could be rolled back if the country's leading far-right party enters national government for the first time later this week.

Vox could gain power under a coalition agreement with the centre-right People's Party (Partido Popular in Spanish), which is leading in the polls but unlikely to win an outright majority in the country’s upcoming snap election. Spain has had coalition governments since 2015. 

Under Spain’s current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), ambitious new laws around everything from menstrual leave to free trains have been passed. But they’ve also been met with frequent criticism from populist right-wing voices, especially because of the Prime Minister’s reliance on support from Basque and Catalan separatists to see legislation through. Spain’s current right-wing opposition are now demanding to “roll back Sanchismo”. 

Sánchez – who called the snap election after PSOE and its coalition partner United We Can suffered losses in local and regional elections in May – is lagging behind in the vast majority of polls, paving the way for Vox to enter government with the People’s Party.

“The result of the 23 July election will dictate Vox capacity to shape Spanish policy,” Dr Jose Javier Olivas Osuna from the National Distance Education University in Madrid told VICE News. He said that if the People's Party gets close to an absolute majority it may try to rule as a minority government. 

“However, if the Partido Popular falls 25 or 30 seats short of the absolute majority, it is likely that Vox succeeds in pressuring Partido Popular to include them in the government. This would certainly make them more capable of reversing some of the most divisive laws such as the recent transgender [law] and first menstrual leave,” he said.

With 52 lawmakers in Parliament – more than double the amount of seats it had before the last election – Vox is already the third largest party in Spain, enjoying power-sharing arrangements across the country in over 140 cities, and regionally in Castile y Leon, Valencia, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands with the People’s Party. In each of these regions, more conventional right-wing conservatives were unable to win a majority, and the same is expected later this month. Vox is now a tried and tested coalition partner; it has already succeeded in reversing climate crisis-fighting policies after gaining power in Spain’s recent local elections, where bicycle lanes and low emission zones are now being rerouted and reduced. 

Vox frequently makes the news for its controversies, whether it’s in the cities it’s won power or not – earlier this month in Madrid, the capital’s electoral commission ordered Vox to remove a banner that depicted a hand throwing symbols representing feminism, LGBTQ rights, environmental programmes and communism into a bin. Last year, VICE News reported how Vox’s several attempts to quash comprehensive sexuality education and anti-trans policies were leading to hateful rhetoric in the capital’s classrooms.

Dr Emmy Eklundh, senior lecturer in politics at Cardiff University, told VICE News that many of the issues Vox campaigns on are legislative changes that can only be fulfilled in national government. “They’re concerned about identity politics, limiting LGBT rights, limiting abortion,” she said. “That can’t be done at a regional level. Spain is a semi-federalised system, but the regions don’t have that sort of power. Vox has a lot of suggestions but they haven’t really been tested in a ruling position. That speaks in their favour because they can claim they will do all sorts of things.”

Vox’s campaign slogan for the national election is “Vote for what’s important,” and what appears to be important for Vox are the same touchstone issues that the far-right has established across Europe with the likes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy; anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and anti-migrant. Vox declares in its manifesto, which came out earlier this week, that “Pedro Sánchez’s government has propelled a culture of death”. 

Parroting the words of other far-right parties in Europe like Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the new manifesto from Vox claims that it will defend “the right to life from conception until natural death,” beginning with the abolition of Spain’s laws protecting abortion and euthanasia, including the law that protects those who assist with abortions from being prosecuted.

Vox leaders would want pregnant women to see a psychologist as well as obtain an ultrasound and hear the foetal heartbeat, and would promote national adoption as an alternative to abortion. Public funding to organisations providing or even just promoting abortion care would be eradicated, and conscientious objectors would be protected from offering care that misaligned with their values. 

Vox has also pledged to abolish Spain’s new “trans law” as it is known, which serves to protect trans rights and allows anyone aged over 16 to change their gender on official documents without medical supervision and without parental backing. In the party’s manifesto, the law is described as “an attack on the privacy, integrity and equality of the Spanish and denies biological reality.” 

Vox also wants to do away with Spain’s new consent law, in which sex without clearly expressed consent can be considered rape. “We will substitute it with a law that raises the penalties of all rapists, including life-long imprisonment,” the manifesto says, in addition to lowering the penal age so that minors who commit these crimes could face identical penalties.

The party’s immigration pledges are similarly strict, with one promising a naval blockade that would be set up to stop migrants from arriving on Spanish shores. 

Olivas Osuna, from the National Distance Education University in Madrid, said Vox wouldn’t find it easy to scrap these laws.

“Many other socially progressive laws that Vox has been openly criticising, such as the abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage laws, enjoy wide levels of popular support in Spain,” he said. “Even if this far-right party enters a coalition government with the Partido Popular, they will unlikely be reversed.”

How the Prime Minister actually turned this popular support into policy, however, is part of the reason why Sánchez is likely to lose his premiership. “Things aren’t too bad in Spain, it’s not going through a worse economic situation than any other country,” Eklundh, from Cardiff University, said. “The Sánchez government has raised the minimum wage 5 times in the last few years and this has meant a raising of living standards across the board. They are supportive of these issues.”

“What they are not supportive of, and Vox has played well, is Sánchez has relied on the secessionist, regional parties that operate on a national level to get support for these policies. That has been seen as horrible. There is resistance amongst a large part of the electorate against rights being awarded to these parts of the country.”

Even if the People’s Party – out of power since 2018 – does win enough seats to avoid a power share with Vox, the far-right party is unlikely to disappear from Spanish politics. Olivas Osuna warned “an absolute majority can push Vox leadership to further radicalise their discourse and focus on issues such as immigration or re-centralization of power in which their stance diverges more significantly from that of PP.” 

“Vox noticeably changed since its inception in December 2013 transitioning from a neo-liberal conservative party into a radical-right populist one. Their communication strategy has been greatly influenced by Trump and they have recently established close ties with other far right European parties.”