Catalonia is no stranger to the consolidation of the extreme right as a political option. In the elections last Sunday. Vox, the party led by Santiago Abascal, obtained more than 5 percent of the votes, only two points below the Spanish average.
With a no less corrective factor: the significant presence of this formation in the Catalan municipalities – it is the seventh electoral strength – coexists with the emergence of a constellation of small pro-independence ultra-right parties that have also carved a niche for themselves in the town halls. Overall, the ultras have managed to be present – ​​with some exceptions, with one or two representatives at most – in 80 town halls with a total of 132 councillors.
The vast majority are from Vox. This formation obtained 124 councilors, multiplying by forty the results of the previous municipal elections when it obtained only three representatives, all of them concentrated in a single municipality, Salt, in Girona. Now there are four, one more than then.
While in the Parliament of Catalonia the so-called sanitary cordon continues to be applied to the 11 deputies that Vox obtained in the regional elections —as if he did not want to see them, the president of the Generalitat turns his back on the ultranationalist representatives when he answers them in the sessions of control— since last Sunday the formation of Santiago Abascal has representatives in 77 municipalities of Catalonia. In total, 3 million Catalans have far-right councilors sitting in the plenary hall of their town halls.
The vote for Vox in Catalonia presents some significant novelties. The evidence that it is in the municipalities of the Barcelona metropolitan area where it has managed to locate a greater number of councilors should not hide the fact that its best percentage results, between 9 and 10%, are not all there.
They are also in more exotic latitudes, in municipalities characterized by the dispersed urbanism of the old summer resorts now converted into primary residences. Salou, Cunit, Piera, Cubelles or Tordera… It is the Catalonia of alarms. Houses with gardens in urbanizations far from public services and where security has become a recurring concern. Where Prosegur or Securitas Direct sheets placed on doors and windows are more common than geraniums. The dream of the house and l’hortet is restless.
In some of these census sections, Vox has managed to reach almost 20% of the votes. As in the urbanization of Can Claramunt (Piera) or Rodolat del Moro (Tarragona) where this formation has brought together between 19% and 20.5% of the vote. Both percentages quadruple the average Catalan vote for Vox.
The extreme right hit the nail on the head. Its propaganda has been hanging on the billboards of these scattered urbanizations for months: “With Vox you will live in a safe neighborhood†printed on a purple background -Podemos color- with the image of some hooded youths. She has not only managed to place the occupations debate at the center of the campaign, but has also managed to capitalize on that fear in votes.
In the metropolitan area, except in Badalona, ​​where GarcÃa Albiol has monopolized the entire vote, Vox is present in almost all municipalities to a greater or lesser extent. Some results are very striking: in l’Hospitalet there are census areas of the La Florida neighborhood where the PSC won but the ultra party was the second force with 17% of the votes, well above the Catalan average.
In Mataró, where Vox has reached 12% of the votes, in some census areas it even exceeds these marks and has obtained more than 20%. In the capital of Maresme, as in l’Hospitalet, the PSC governs, whose leadership already recognizes that the growth of the ultra vote constitutes a serious threat and a problem for reaching alternative majorities to the independence movement.
The strength of the security and immigration vector – in Mataró, for example, there is a district with 24% of the population born in another country – has a big impact on these polling stations.
This combination can explain results as surprising as that of Manresa where another ultra party, this time pro-independence, the Front Nacional has obtained two councilors in addition to the one that Vox also obtained. The intransigent vote adds up to 12% in the capital of Bages where Esquerra Republicana has won.
But if somewhere it is found that something is failing in Catalonia, it is in Ripoll. In the town where the young terrorists who attacked on the Rambla and Cambrils in 2017 grew up, the majority party is the Aliança Catalana formation, led by SÃlvia Orriols. He has obtained six councilors out of a possible 17. The leader of this formation, on whose website images of the police beating 1-O voters are mixed with those of alleged immigrants being detained by the Mossos, was a militant of Estat Català and in the 2019 elections she already won a position as a councilor for the Front Nacional.
The first is the last. Josep Anglada, the leader of Plataforma per Catalunya, the first Catalan-inspired xenophobic formation, has managed to return to Vic town hall with his new party Som Identitaris.
If the votes of one sign and another are added, in Catalonia the extreme right obtained a total of 157,600 ballots and was less than 100,000 votes away from the 247,000 that the PP received. However, in Catalonia it seems very unlikely that on June 17, when the town councils will be constituted, those votes will count to form governments. But that they are not taken into account does not mean that they do not exist.
