The most likely government to emerge - most analysts predict - will be a coalition including a hard-right nationalist party for the first time in Spain since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
More left-leaning Spaniards are frantically texting contacts, urging them to make sure to vote - despite the heat and it being holiday time for many - to “stop the fascists” in their tracks.The rhetoric this election season has been toxic, with voters becoming increasingly polarised.
It’s a fight over values, traditions and about what being Spanish should mean in 2023.
This kind of heated identity debate isn’t peculiar to Spain. Think of Italy, France, Brazil or the post-Trumpian debate in the US.
At EU HQ in Brussels, there are huge concerns about a resurgence of hard-right nationalist parties across Europe.
The measures the government took during COVID were just inefficient, delayed and too strict at the same time, he formed a coalition government with separatists and former terrorists after explicitly stating he wouldn’t and he has tried to increase control over the judicial power, weakening even more the separation of powers (which is very weak in my country).
There are also controversial laws passed by coalition members like the “only yes is yes” law, which ended up severely reducing charges to rapists and pedophiles, and it took a lot of time to get it fixed due to sheer stubborness of politicians, instead accusing the judges for “being sexists and fascists”, when law must always act in favour of the guilty (Right to the non-retroactivity of the law)
It’s expectable to think a sizeable amount of people would vote the opposition