The Spanish Right Wants to Create Another Venezuela
Ever since the PSOE and Unidas Podemos formed a governing coalition in January, Spain’s right-wing opposition has denied its democratic legitimacy. Calls for police mutiny and resistance against the COVID-19 lockdown show how the Spanish right is imitating its Latin American counterparts, seeking to create a climate of chaos that can bring down the government.
A man waves a Spanish flag as he takes part in an in-vehicle protest against the Spanish government on May 23, 2020 in Madrid, Spain. Far-right Vox party has called for in-vehicle protests across Spain against the Spanish government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty Images)
Spain has been one of the countries hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. According to the World Health Organization, by mid-May Spain had the fifth-most cases and number of deaths, behind the United States, UK, Italy, and France. At that point, it had a confirmed 232,037 cases — and 28,628 deaths.
But Spain has also been one of the countries where the pandemic has been most strongly politicized. The current government, made up of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and its main ally Unidas Podemos, took form after the November 2019 election; headed by PSOE premier Pedro Sánchez and deputy prime minister Pablo Iglesias, this is the first governing coalition of the Left since before the Civil War of the 1930s.
Yet the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox have unrelentingly refused to accept this government — denying both the legitimacy of the electoral result and the coalition that eventually formed. For the PP and Vox, this government is “undemocratic,” born of an “institutional coup,” and propped up by “separatists” (i.e., the Catalan national parties) and “terrorists” (i.e., Bildu, the left-wing nationalist party in the Basque Country, which mass media usually associate with disbanded terrorist group ETA).
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