Spanish elections: Will Sanchez's political gamble pay off?

In Valencia, Spain's third-largest city, a political experiment is underway: Last month, in the wake of regional elections that saw the ruling Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) take a drubbing across the country, the traditional center-right Popular Party (PP) teamed up with the ascendant far-right party Vox to form a governing coalition.

The Valencian power-sharing deal is not unprecedented at the regional level in Spain. But after center-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called snap parliamentary elections for July 23 — elections were originally slated for later this year — the eastern coastal city represents a glimpse of what might happen on the national level if Sanchez's electoral gamble goes awry.

After four years in government, the coalition between the Socialists and its far-left junior partner Unidas Podemos ("United We Can") could easily lose power.

The final pre-Election Day opinion polls showed PP with a comfortable lead over the Socialists but short of an outright majority without Vox's support, according to the news agency Reuters. Even then, the two parties could still fall short of the parliamentary seats needed to form a right-wing coalition.

That's especially true because the gap between the two major parties has closed in recent weeks. Sumar, a new left-wing alliance that includes Unidas Podemos, is running neck-and-neck with Vox and could potentially team up with the Socialists to give Sanchez a second term.

Vox poised to play kingmaker

With just days to go until Election Day, the outcome remains to be seen. But if Spain indeed swings to the right, it may well follow recent electoral trends in other European countries like Italy, Finland, Sweden and Greece — all of which saw an upswing in support for right-wing parties in recent national elections.

Vox, which was founded in 2013 and first gained seats in the Spanish parliament in 2019, has instrumentalized its hardline positions on social issues and immigration to steadily build its support in recent years.

On Valencia's coastal promenade, some passersby were clearly alarmed by the prospect. "It's totally insane — the worst thing that could happen to this country,” one woman with strong thoughts on a PP-Vox national government told DW's Jan-Philipp Scholz.

Many who oppose Vox fear the ultraconservative approach it takes to social issues. "They want to scrap the abortion law; they want to get rid of the euthanasia law; they say that gender violence doesn't exist," a younger woman from Madrid told DW. "It all makes me really scared."

The Sanchez-led government has pushed through a string of socially progressive policies combating gender violence, tightening rape laws, making it easier for people to legally change their gender, and loosening abortion restrictions.

Vox, meanwhile, represents the antithesis of the Sanchez government's social policies: It wants to repeal the transgender law among others, is staunchly anti-immigration, criticizes the European Union, and is skeptical about the need to fight climate change with decisive policy.

PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo has tried to distance his party from some of Vox's more extreme positions, but Vox leader Santiago Abascal may well emerge as the post-Election Day kingmaker on Sunday.

Not everyone on Valencia's promenade was pessimistic about the prospect of a PP-Vox government: "It gives me a bit of hope,” one man said. "The model here in Valencia would certainly be a good solution for the whole country after the election.”

A PP-Vox coalition is unlikely to be straightforward, however: Party leaders' statements on social issues would make coalition negotiations between the two parties tricky. In Valencia, Vox regional deputy leader Jose Maria Llanos denied the existence of "gender violence” (as opposed to domestic violence or Vox's preferred term "intrafamily violence”) last month. PP national leader Feijoo immediately responded on Twitter, making clear he did not share this view. "Gender violence exists,” Feijoo wrote.

On the campaign trail

While so-called "culture war” issues (gender parity, same-sex marriage, and reckoning with  Spain's Fascist past) have featured heavily in recent weeks, it is economic issues that have ultimately dominated the campaign, Omar Encarnacion, an expert on Spanish politics and professor at Bard College in the United States, told DW.

When surveyed by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), Spanish voters said their top concerns were the economic crisis, unemployment, political problems in general, health care and the quality of available work.

Spain was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and is still feeling its effects: The country of 47 million had by far the highest unemployment rate in the EU in May, at 12.7%.

As the country approaches Election Day, Sanchez has tried to energize his party's base by invoking centrist voters' fears about the dangers of a right-wing coalition. Part of the logic in calling snap elections — the general poll was originally set for much later this year — was to quickly unify the left, Encarnacion said.

Feijoo has slammed the photogenic, internationally popular prime minister's style of government, which the PP dubs "Sanchismo.” The conservative leader has accused Sanchez of centering the campaign on his personality and of flip-flopping on important issues. Sanchez, Feijoo said in a speech last Friday, has made his career on "agreeing to anything with anyone in order to get into power and stay there, lying about important issues."

Right-wing leaders have also criticized Sanchez for working with Catalan and Basque independence forces to get certain policies over the line. He also pardoned nine jailed Catalonian independence leaders in 2021, a move that earned him strong rebukes from PP and Vox.

Sanchez' big bet

Sanchez has staked his political career on a risky calculation: That holding early elections will help crystallize support behind his party. In the end, it might not be his personal performance that seals the deal either way.

"The election will likely be decided by how the supporting parties perform. The polls show Podemos/Sumar overtaking Vox; if that's the case then the gamble would pay off,” Encarnacion said.

If Sanchez's move fails and the PP does team up with Vox for a national governing coalition, the junior partner would be the furthest-right force in the Spanish government since the end of the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in the 1970s. But, Encarnacion points out, "Vox would be a very junior partner in a PP-Vox coalition.”

In some EU countries, traditional center-right parties have been lambasted for even considering breaking the so-called "cordon sanitaire" between more mainstream parties and the far right: Germany's conservative Christian Democrats, for example, have faced massive criticism for even local- and regional-level attempts to vote alongside the populist far-right Alternative for Germany party. No such cordon sanitaire exists in Spain, according to Encarnacion.

"The PP is a late 1980s reinvention of Alianza Popular, a neo-Francoist party that formed during the democratic transition in the late 1970s. And VOX is an offshoot of the PP,” he explained. Nationalist-conservative Abascal left the PP to form Vox, which takes a hard line on Catalonian nationalism and saw its support surge amid the fallout from the independence crisis.

If the opinion polls hold true on Sunday, it's possible that no one party emerges victorious or is even able to build an immediate coalition. Repeat elections are a distinct possibility.

"Whatever happens on Sunday, the [Socialists] will remain a force in Spanish politics. And the rise of Vox only dates to 2019,” Encarnacion said. "That said, an unavoidable impression would be the rising fortunes of the far right.” 

Sanchez' big bet will likely have repercussions that reverberate throughout Europe.

Edited by: Emily Schultheis