More than 60% of Spaniards are worried about the prospect of a coalition government that includes the far-right Vox party, according to a survey published less than two weeks before the country’s snap general election.
The Ipsos poll, conducted for Spain’s La Vanguardia newspaper, found that 42.1% of those surveyed were very worried by the idea of Vox sharing power with the conservative People’s party (PP), while 18% were quite worried.
Recent polls suggest the PP is on course to win the most seats on 23 July, but may well need to forge a coalition with Vox to reach an absolute majority of 176 seats in Spain’s 350-seat congress. The election, originally due to be held at the end of the year, was brought forward after the socialist-led coalition government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, suffered a drubbing in May’s regional and municipal elections.
Sánchez has warned that a PP-Vox alliance would reverse the progress his government has made on equality, rights and the environment, and accused the PP of assuming “the policies and postures of Vox”.
The socialist leader is hoping that his party and the new leftwing Sumar alliance will instead attract enough voters to build their own ruling coalition.
The Ipsos poll found that 26% of respondents were very worried by the idea of a socialist-Sumar government, while 15% were quite worried.
Despite insisting that the PP party is a centre-right, moderate group, its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has shown himself to be open to a national coalition with Vox, and the PP has already struck deals with the far-right party to jointly govern many towns and cities as well as the regions of Castilla y León, Valencia and Extremadura.
Although the PP’s candidate in Extremadura initially ruled out any alliances with Vox because of the far-right party’s denial of gender-based violence and demonisation of migrants, she performed a swift U-turn at the end of June.
Both the PP and Vox have repeatedly criticised Sánchez’s minority government for its reliance on Basque and Catalan pro-independence parties, and for its botched and unpopular sexual consent law under which more than 100 sex offenders were inadvertently released from jail.
Sánchez’s dealings with the Basque nationalist party EH Bildu came under renewed scrutiny in the run-up to the May elections after it emerged that the party was fielding 44 convicted members of the defunct Basque terror group Eta, including seven people found guilty of violent crimes, as candidates.
Speaking at a campaign rally on Sunday, Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, accused the prime minister of hypocrisy, saying: “Pedro Sánchez has said that you have to vote for him to protect democracy – and that from a prime minister who came to power by lying to the Spanish people and making deals with the enemies of democracy, of the constitutional order and of coexistence.”
In particularly inflammatory comments, Abascal added: “As far as Pedro Sánchez is concerned, protecting democracy is about getting the votes of rapists, coup-mongers, [the convicted Eta murderer] Txapote and of Mohammed.”
Leading Spanish cultural figures have also expressed deep concern over the PP and Vox’s attitude to the arts after several incidents of apparent censorship by councils run by the right or far right.
The director of a play about a Republican teacher who was murdered during the Spanish civil war has accused the council of Briviesca in Castilla y León of censoring the work after it cancelled performances, although the council has insisted the decision was taken because of logistical and safety concerns rather than on ideological grounds.
It also emerged last week that the PP-Vox council of the northern Spanish town of Bezana had apparently cancelled a screening of the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear because it features a kiss between two women – a scene that led to the movie being banned in Saudi Arabia. Vox has also been accused of vetoing a theatrical adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s time-travelling, gender-shifting classic Orlando because its protagonist “goes from being a man to a woman”.
Last week, members of the newly formed Free Arts Platform released an open letter deploring the eruption of censorship.
“As professionals in the world of culture, we wish to denounce the return of censorship that is attacking freedom of expression – a social and democratic right enshrined in our constitution,” they said. “We demand the protection of our fundamental rights because, without culture, there is no democracy.”
Another letter from dozens of Spain’s cultural titans – including the film-maker Pedro Almodóvar – has urged voters to turn out in force to preserve the social and environmental progress made by Sánchez’s government.
“The general election on 23 July will be particularly decisive,” they wrote. “It’s clear that we’re in the midst of a new conservative offensive – one with a far-right drift – not just in Spain but in many countries across Europe.”
