Spain heads to the polls after rancorous campaign

In Madrid’s Pedro Zerolo square, a brightly coloured banner measuring 400 square metres hangs from a block of flats, with a man’s face at its centre. In fact, it’s a mash-up of two politicians: the conservative Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the leader of the far-right Vox, Santiago Abascal. The text next to the face reads: “Despising the rights of women is not patriotism”, “Homophobia is not freedom” and, finally, “Vote against the pacts of hate”.

The message is that voting for the conservative candidate in this Sunday’s general election is the same as voting for the far right and that if they are able to form a government together, which polls suggest is likely, they will roll back the rights of women, members of the LGBTQ community and others.

It was entirely in step with a campaign whose virulent tone has underlined the polarised nature of Spanish politics and the starkly contrasting visions of the country that left and right are offering.

Pedro Sánchez, who has led a left-wing coalition since 2020, goes into this election trailing Núñez Feijóo’s Popular Party (PP) in polls.

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The Socialist leader called the snap ballot just hours after the left suffered poor results in May’s local elections, bringing the election forward from December. It was a typically bold move by Sánchez (51), but it is unclear whether it has paid off.

Despite overseeing an economic recovery since the pandemic that is outstripping most of Spain’s neighbours – inflation has dropped below 2 per cent and growth is among the EU’s fastest – other issues have dominated the campaign, ensuring Sánchez remains the underdog.

Among those issues is a bungled sexual consent bill, the “Only yes means yes” law, approved by his government last year, which inadvertently led to the reduction of hundreds of jails sentences of sex offenders due to a loophole. Although the legislation was associated more with his coalition partner, Unidas Podemos, the backlash from the right was damaging.

“This is one of the first election campaigns in which the economy has barely figured,” said José Pablo Ferrándiz, head of public opinion in Spain for polling firm Ipsos. “There are new issues which can divide voters, such as the ‘Only yes means yes’ law and climate change.”

Meanwhile, Spain’s territorial unity remains an inflammatory theme. The Sánchez government’s reliance on the parliamentary support of Catalan and Basque nationalists – particularly EH Bildu, which has links to the defunct terrorist group Eta – has drawn constant attacks from the opposition. Concessions he has made to the Catalan independence movement, such as pardoning nine jailed leaders and modifying the criminal code, have improved the atmosphere in Catalonia but intensified the opprobrium from the right.

“[EH] Bildu and ERC decide the price and Sánchez pays it, otherwise he wouldn’t be prime minister,” said Núñez Feijóo.

Meanwhile the left has warned that the PP, as the banner in Pedro Zerolo square claimed, is plotting to form a coalition with Vox.

“A Spain of rights, or a Spain of far rights,” read one Socialist Party campaign slogan.

The PP and Vox have already formed dozens of governments together on a local level, after their success in May’s municipal and regional elections. The far-right party’s influence has been apparent since then as some of those governments have removed LGBTQ flags from public buildings, eliminated gender equality departments or, in one town in the Madrid region, cancelled a theatre performance of Virginia Woolf’s feminist classic Orlando.

Both the Socialists and the PP will be closely watching the performance on Sunday of their possible parliamentary partners. Sánchez has made no secret of the fact he hopes to form another coalition, this time with the new platform Sumar to his left, led by charismatic labour minister Yolanda Díaz, which has absorbed Unidas Podemos and 14 other smaller parties.

In a three-way televised debate – in which Núñez Feijóo refused to take part – Sánchez and Díaz worked in tandem as they attacked Vox leader Abascal over women’s and transgender rights, climate change and other issues.

“Stop laughing at us, we women are not electoral merchandise,” Díaz said, as she showed Abascal a photo of two Vox politicians apparently laughing during a minute of silence for a woman who had been murdered.

The battle for third place between Vox and Sumar could be crucial as each seeks to boost the hopes of their larger allies of forming a government.

“In terms of votes, Sumar and Vox are practically tied, according to a lot of polls,” said Kiko Llaneras, a polling analyst. “If they do end up neck and neck in terms of votes, Vox will probably win more seats because it is stronger in the Spanish interior, in smaller provinces where fewer votes are needed to secure seats, whereas Sumar has a more urban electorate.”

As election day has approached, the left has shifted its attention to a friendship the 61-year-old Núñez Feijóo had with a well-known Galician drug trafficker, Marcial Dorado, in the 1990s. Photographs of the two men holidaying together on a boat first emerged in 2013 and failed to stall the conservative’s career. However, his explanation for the relationship – that he did not know about Dorado’s criminal activity – has drawn disbelief from some, including Díaz, herself a Galician, who has said the trafficker was a notorious figure in the region in the 1990s.

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On Friday, the PP leader sought to clarify the matter, saying that when he knew Dorado, “he had been a smuggler, never a drug trafficker”.

In the weird microclimate of this election campaign, it is not clear whether the serious doubts hanging over Núñez Feijóo’s past will hurt him on Sunday. However, it is apparent that this general election offers Spaniards a clear choice regarding the future of their country.