FactualThe Andalusians are called to elect their regional parliament on Sunday 19 June. If the People’s Party is clearly ahead in the polls, the far-right Vox party could get around twenty seats and demand to enter government.
Jaen, 9pm and still 37°C in the shade. While the elections for the regional parliament are being held on Sunday June 19, the early heat wave did not deter hundreds of people from coming to attend, on Friday June 10, the meeting of the far-right Vox party in this municipality of Andalusia accustomed in high heat. In the Parc de la Concorde, under a cloud of red and gold flags and after loud Viva Spainthe president of the party, Santiago Abascal, and the candidate for the presidency of the Andalusian government, Macarena Olona, outlined the themes dear to the cultural battle they have been waging since 2014 in Spain: “unleashed immigration”, “the lies of the progressives”feminism “sectarian”, “the risks of multiculturalism” or the benefits of hunting against “fanatical ideology” environmentalists…
The choice of the place is not insignificant: formerly called Victory Park, in reference to that of the national camp during the civil war (1936-1939), it was renamed in 2009, in application of the law of historical memory which obliges the communes to change the Francoist nomenclatures. A law that Vox has promised to repeal if he ever comes to power…
More than 6 million Andalusians are called to vote on Sunday. And, with nearly 16% of the intention to vote according to the latest polls, Vox could again play the role of kingmakers, as in January 2019, when it allowed a coalition between the People’s Party (PP, right) and Ciudadanos (liberal) to govern with the support of its eleven regional deputies. With the difference that the far-right party, which could obtain around twenty seats this time, is now demanding to enter the regional government, as it did in Castile and Leon in April. In order, he says, to better control it. “They defend the values of life and the family and want to put an end to the globalist current which leads to the loss of our identity: it is our last hope”says Sergio Ibañez, a 47-year-old dental technician, who came with his wife and their baby. “It is time to put order in the face of irregular immigration and the LGBT dictatorship and to regain our national dignity”, adds Antonio de Toro, a 60-year-old architect. As for Manuel Olivera, a 55-year-old former fisherman and ex-far left activist, he approves of his defense of “fathers” It front of “false complaints of gender violence”.
Test with the Spanish legislative
For the PP, as for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), these elections are a test before the Spanish legislative elections of 2023. For the head of the socialist government, Pedro Sanchez, it is a question of measuring the extent of the damage in the traditional Andalusian socialist bastion, hitherto its main attic. For the president of the Andalusian government, the conservative Juanma Moreno, the question is not so much whether he will win the elections, as the lead given to him by the polls is comfortable (38% of the intention to vote), but s he will be able to govern alone or if he will have to give in to the demands of Vox – which he rules out, for the time being. Representative of the moderate wing of the PP, he knows that he has put an end to thirty-seven years of socialist hegemony in Andalusia thanks to the votes taken from the center left.
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