Ángel Collado
Contrary to what is happening in France or Italy, the extreme right is deflating in Spain, and is even entering a crisis. The rise of the Popular Party with Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the helm and already as a clear government alternative, plus its failures in the regional elections in Madrid and Andalusia, have paralysed Vox with the downward forecasts of the polls and the first internal fights have arisen. The president, Santiago Abascal, clashes with the brightest and most influential figure in his party, Macarena Olona.
The party of the new, more conservative right, raised by former PP militants like Abascal himself and inspired by the populism of the French National Front and its Italian counterparts, achieved 15 per cent of the vote and 53 seats in the 2019 general elections. Vox then became the third largest group in Congress behind PSOE and PP. Three years later, its former objective of supplanting the PP has become that of slowing the PP’s rise in order to serve as a necessary complement to a future government of Núñez Feijóo.
The results of the Andalusian regional elections last June were a hard blow to Abascal’s national expectations. He aspired to enter into a coalition government with the PP and the polls gave the popular candidate, Juan Manuel Moreno, an absolute majority that allows him to lead the Andalusian regional government without the need for a partner.
But Vox’s biggest failure in these elections was the gamble of sending its most senior national deputy, Macarena Olona, to run against Moreno with the ultimate aim of claiming the vice-presidency of the Junta for Olona herself in a PP-Vox coalition. Abascal’s party was left without touching power and its candidate, disallowed to stay in Andalusia and with no margin to return to her seat in Congress.
Moreover, in the elections, Vox only increased its share of the vote by two points, with 13 per cent of the vote compared to 43 per cent for the PP. Andalusia is the most populated region in Spain and also where the largest number of deputies are elected to Congress: 61 of the 350 that make up the Chamber. As a sample for the general elections, the data for the expectations of the extreme right was very negative.
The June fiasco that opened the crisis in Vox over the Olona case was preceded by the failure a year earlier in the Madrid regional elections, where the triumph of the PP candidate, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, left the competition on the right with 10 per cent of the vote compared to her 44 per cent. And Madrid happens to be the provincial constituency that contributes the most deputies to the national parliament.
Abascal has almost disappeared from political activity and debate throughout the summer while Olona, after leaving all his posts, received expressions of support from party activists and sympathisers all over Spain. And in the networks and during his holidays, as in the Camino de Santiago.
Abascal and Olona are now exchanging messages through the media. The party president does not clarify whether he wants to find a new destination for his most famous deputy and the dissident is spreading all kinds of rumours about her plans in politics, including that of a split.
This month’s polls have also taken advantage of the data from the Andalusian elections to add uncertainty to Vox’s expectations. All of them point downwards for Abascal’s party as they consolidate an advantage of between 5 and 7 points for the PP over the PSOE.
Feijóo’s push in the polls as an alternative to Pedro Sánchez’s social-communist coalition government is diluting the extreme right, which three years ago could have peaked in the general elections with 15 per cent of the votes on which Vox aspired to lead the opposition and replace the PP. Abascal is now focused on ensuring that Olona does not break up the party and on avoiding a similar failure in next year’s general elections as in the Andalusian elections.
