‘Spain First’: Vox Party on Brink of Sharing Power

 

Spain could be about to be governed by a coalition that includes a populist party for the first time since the Francisco Franco dictatorship ended in 1975.

Opinion polls indicate that the conservative Popular Party, led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has enough support to unseat socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, but will fall short of an outright majority. That leaves Vox — an nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-feminist group — the likely kingmaker.

Part of the reason Vox has become Spain’s third-biggest party is it has followed another key trend in modern populist politics: fears that green measures in Spain, which faces chronic droughts, will destroy the agricultural industry. Vox and the Popular Party, which already jointly govern the southwestern Extremadura region, back a plan to legalize and expand water drilling in one of Europe’s wetlands to fuel the fruit industry.

Farmers have for decades been using the aquifer in the Doñana area west of Seville in southern Spain to provide the water needed for the local red fruit economy, which involves growing mainly strawberries, raspberries, cranberries and blueberries.

A law dubbed the “strawberry plan” passed in 2014 allowed huge amounts of drilling. The Popular Party, which controls the regional government in Andalusia, intends to declare an amnesty on the use of water from illegally drilled wells and expand the irrigable land by as much as 4,000 acres — with Vox’s strong support.

Strawberry farming is big business: One local province, Huelva, provides 98% of Spain’s entire strawberry crop and 30% of the strawberries consumed across the 27 countries of the European Union.

Vox, which says many families rely on the wells for their livelihoods, is calling for much wider use of water regardless of the impact such changes will have on the already degraded environment.

“Neither globalist agendas nor separatist concessions can prevent access to water for all,” Santiago Abascal, who helped found the party in 2013 and began leading it the following year, tweeted last month. He also called for the water basins of Spain to be connected to allow drought-hit areas to benefit from water in other regions.

Interfresa, which represents red fruit growers in Andalusia, told NBC News in a statement that up to 30,000 jobs could be lost because of a lack of water and that it supports the Vox and Popular Party water plan because it gives “legal certainty” to its members.

UNESCO said in a statement earlier this year that it was “concerned” by the plan.

Abascal, who has called for a “reconquista,” or reconquest of Spain, a reference to the victory of Christians over Muslims, who ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries until 1492. This sort of dog-whistle rhetoric hinting falsely that the country has been taken over by foreigners — and most often nonwhite non-Christian ones — is a frequent refrain among the right wing in Europe.

Rafael Bardají, a political consultant who co-founded Vox as an off-shoot of the Popular Party in 2013 and who is close to Abascal, acknowledged that he believed the party was on course to take power in this weekend’s elections.

“If the PP goes around 140 seats and below and Vox keeps at least 40 seats, I think it’s unavoidable,” he said, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, which he often visits on business. “All the polls now are saying Vox is in crisis, but I don’t believe it as much as they are saying.”

Bardají no longer officially represents Vox and left its executive committee two years ago for health reasons, but he still informally advises the party.

He also rejects comparisons with Franco. Instead, he says, the party honors tradition and the country.

“I don’t think we are as far-right as people try to portray, like we are fascists or something,” he said.

“Trump had that slogan ‘America first’ — we want Spaniards first. When it comes to illegal immigration and so on,” he added.

https://www.cf.org/news/spain-first-vox-party-on-brink-of-sharing-power/