Spain: Vox party that wants to “make Spain great again” storms the polls

The Trump effect. Trump is a movement, a freedom movement. Finally, a choice for people yearning to be free.

In an area where the socialists have ruled unchallenged since the first autonomous elections in 1982, to be reduced to 33 seats with 27.9% of the votes was a humiliation. This humiliation was sharpened by the fact that the Socialist premier of Andalusia, Susana Diaz, called the elections early (they were scheduled to take place in March 2019). She believed that her mandate would be strengthened and her assumed victory would consolidate the Socialist government at a national level. The very opposite happened.

This regional election demonstrated both the decline of the Spanish left in general, and a corresponding rise in the rise of the right across Andalusia.

Photo: Vox’s leader Santiago Abascal (l) and regional candidate Francisco Serrano celebrated their win on Sunday

It begins: Party that wants to “make Spain great again” storms the polls

By Voice of Europe 5 December 2018:

As Voice of Europe reported, for the first time in decades a right-wing party won seats in a large Spanish region.

By gaining 12 parliamentary seats in Andalusia, Vox shocked and gave a strong blow to Spain’s left.

For a lot of Spaniards the result of Santiago Abascal’s Vox came as a surprise, but probably not for the leader himself. We are “in step with what millions of Spaniards think,” Abascal said earlier.

Polls since January this year show that Vox received five times more support in Spain. A recent poll even shows the party is at 10 per cent of the vote.

“We stand for the same law-and-order and social conservative causes as Trump,” Santiago Abascal, the leader of the movement says in an interview.

Like most conservative populist parties Vox focuses on reducing migration and Islamisation as it vows to “make Spain great again”.

According to The Local, a leftist media outlet, Vox is here to stay in Spain and we will hear more of them:

“The political shockwaves from Sunday night will be felt all around the country right through 2019 to the local, regional and European elections in May.

“Spain now has its own alt-right or national populist party, and moves into five-party politics territory.

“Not that the four-party politics that came out of the 2015 elections was getting the country anywhere fast or better, but room for one more, it seems,” columnist Matthew Bennett said.