MADRID — Following Sunday’s general election in Spain, far-right party Vox enters the national parliament for the first time since Spain’s transition to democracy after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.
The anti-immigrant party led by Santiago Abascal obtained 10.3% of the votes, and 24 seats.
”Spain was the only country without an influential far-right party, but that has changed,” said Joan Botella, professor of political science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
The rise of Vox, a party with several Holocaust deniers in its ranks, has splintered the right-wing vote and further fragmented Spain’s political landscape and playing into the hands of the Socialists which won an almost 50% increase in seats.
‘’It is very similar to what is going on in other European countries. It’s a mix of outrage because the economical situation, nationalism and xenophobia,’’ Jorge Marirrodriga, a journalist at El Pais, the largest daily neswpaper in Spain, told EJP.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists scored a big victory in the election, though they’ll still need to forge a coalition to stay in power. With over 99 percent of the ballots counted, the Socialists won about 29 percent of the vote and 123 of the 350 seats in parliament — a huge step up from their current 85.
The Popular Party came second on 66 seats — making new leader Pablo Casado the big loser of the night. The liberal Ciudadanos won 57 seats, the far-left Podemos and its allies 42 seats, and the far-right Vox has 24 seats.
“The future has won and the past has lost,” Sanchez told supporters on Sunday from the Socialist Party (PSOE) headquarters in Madrid. “We’ve sent the world a message,” he said. “We can beat the reactionaries and the authoritarians.”
The Socialist leader now has several possibilities in forming a coalition. His party could rely on the support of Podemos — which has vowed to cooperate — plus some small regional parties including Basque nationalists to form a majority.