This text belongs to ‘Política’, the bulletin that Lola García will send every Thursday to the readers of La Vanguardia.
Surely you have noticed it in your environment. More and more people are speaking out against some feminist demands or wearing a Spanish flag on their wrist or expressing their fear of apartment occupations or, after warning that it is not racist, lamenting the “uncontrolled” arrival of immigrants… A certain lack of inhibition is perceived when it comes to showing views that are highly identifiable with a conservative or even far-right ideology. On the other hand, only ten years ago the atmosphere, what we could call social humor, was radically opposite.
Back in 2013, the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas confessed that he had 38 million euros in Switzerland, the Nóos case led to the indictment of the Infanta Cristina, the former president of Caja Madrid Miguel Blesa was imprisoned, the reform was approved of the pensions of the Rajoy government that separated them from the CPI, there were clashes with the police in the protest “Besiege Congress”, tides of citizens demonstrated in numerous cities against cuts, corruption and evictions shouting “yes” , you can” and more than a million and a half Catalans signed up for a human chain for independence. At that time, I’m sure almost everyone he knew belonged to the left…
The PSOE then appeared as a very little left-wing force, very much established in the status quo, so much so that Pedro Sánchez tilted his language towards the podemite world in that first interview with Jordi Évole in 2016 with which he began his return to the leadership of the party. In Catalonia, there was also an obvious shift to the left and the political space previously occupied by Convergència not only closed alliances with the CUP, but also adopted policies that it had not previously proclaimed. Nobody seemed to be on the right at that time in Catalonia. (Parenthesis: how will it evolve now?)
What is happening now? To answer this question, I spoke with José Pablo Ferrándiz, who prepares the surveys published by La Vanguardia at IPSOS. In that opinion institute they do very interesting sociological studies. During the pandemic, I was following them, since they were defining the states of mind that we citizens were going through in the face of that trance. And I must say that they nailed it, at least as far as I and those around me are concerned. Ferrándiz believes that in Spain there have been several phenomena that have led to this wave of right-wing.
The two triggers for the emergence of Vox are identity-based: Catalonia, excited by the independence process, and feminism, activated by the current government of PSOE and Podemos. To this he adds a third ingredient: “In the La Vanguardia survey you see that there are many people who perceive that they do not make ends meet, people who would not fit in with the right but who are pissed off.” They do not have to be precisely those who have the worst time or are in a very vulnerable situation, but rather they believe that they should be better off. In other words, they see themselves as victims of an injustice. And one last factor: the loss of references. In a world marked by sudden and constant changes, they feel lost and look for traditional anchors.
In this context, the fact that the rulers talk about the trans law annoys these sectors. Abunda Ferrándiz: “Even the animal protection law is an example; There are those who do not want to mistreat animals, but it seems to them that these types of debates are not a priority and that they also result in the image of a scolding left. And these people ask themselves: Why do they scold me if I do nothing wrong? To all this we must add a normalization of the ultra-right in the Western world, from Donald Trump to Giorgia Meloni that invites us to think that nothing happens if they govern.
Does that mean Vox is going to get a great result? Not necessarily. The PP’s pacts with the extreme right send the message that the traditional right is not going to fight the extreme right. And, on the other hand, PP voters who may be uncomfortable with those alliances like Sumar less than Vox. That is to say, the popular ones can benefit from this political and social trend towards the right. In this sense, the television face-to-face was very useful for Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
– Votes, handkerchief to use and throw away. Ferrándiz tells me an interesting fact: Vox is the third force among young people. But we can still go further and conclude that today young people are more on the right than on the left, since the first party they vote for is the PP and the second the PSOE. “In a way, they go back to bipartisanship,” he tells me. But don’t take everything as a dogma either, because it seems that among the youth voting is not so solemn and they change ballot papers more easily than the older ones: “If one thing doesn’t work for them, they move on to another.” Well that, votes as if they were disposable handkerchiefs.
