Editorials

The Irish Times view on the Spanish election: the country’s history looms large

Spain deserves better than battles between the ghosts of the past, but a clear vision for its future has been lacking in the campaign

Spain's Prime Minister and Socialist Party (PSOE) candidate Pedro Sanchez delivers a speech during a campaign meeting in the Spanish Basque city of San Sebastian earlier this week, ahead of Sunday's general elections. (Photo by Ander Gillena / AFP)

Wed Jul 19 2023 - 22:00

The worst ghosts of Spain’s past, distant and recent, have haunted the campaign leading to Sunday’s general election, which may propel a far-right party into government, with consequences across the EU.

Spain’s 1978 transition to democracy from General Franco’s 40-year dictatorship, though admirable in many ways, failed to generate a shared repudiation of Franco’s fascism and the preceding civil war. Spain remains dominated by two parties with roots on opposite sides of that conflict, the right-wing Partido Popular (PP), the leader in recent polls, and the governing centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). So polarisation is nothing new in Spanish elections. But the demagogic rhetoric of today’s PP, stealing slogans from the far-right party, Vox, represents a new and troublingly vote-friendly extremism.

Its most offensive expression is the phrase “Que te vote Txapote”-– meaning “Let Txapote vote for you.” Absurdly, it identifies the PSOE prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, with a notorious killer from the defeated Basque terrorist group ETA, which dissolved in 2018. Even PP members bereaved by ETA have expressed outrage.

The PP’s ambiguous attitude to the fascist past has facilitated its recent coalitions with Vox in regional governments, after May’s local elections. Meanwhile, the PSOE’s poor results prompted Sánchez to call a snap general election in high summer. He has a reputation for turning tides, but asking Spaniards to return from holidays to vote in a heatwave is playing a very wild card.

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The PSOE won most seats in 2019, but did not enjoy a majority even when Sánchez created a fractious coalition government with the anti-austerity leftists of Unidas Podemos. He has needed support from pro-independence Basque and Catalan parties to legislate. This has fed the fictional narrative from the PP and Vox that Sánchez is bent on “breaking up Spain”.

Sánchez can claim to have led the country well enough, though severely tested by successive crises, from Covid to mass migration. He has defused the Catalan conflict. However, he allowed Podemos to modify the law on gender-based crimes with negative if unintended consequences. Podemos’ support plummeted, though a new leftist alliance, Sumar, has now formed.

There is an outside chance that Sánchez and Sumar could form a viable coalition. But it says a lot about Spanish politics that the left’s strongest rallying cry is the fear that a PP-Vox government would impose some version of Francoism. It would certainly reverse progressive gender, immigration and environmental laws, and strengthen the so-called illiberal democracy movement in the EU.

Spain deserves better than battles between the ghosts of the past. But clear visions for a better future have been lacking in this campaign.

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