Vox would obtain today a minimum of sixty deputies in a general election, according to the latest published polls. They are at the 18% mark, almost six points above the results obtained in the general elections of July 23, 2023, which this week marks three years.
Read more The legislature of amnesty (for better or worse)
The Amnesty legislature is proving beneficial for Vox, and the ripple effect of Trumpism even more so. Santiago Abascal’s party is today a magnet that attracts the angry Spaniard. The initials have more magnetism than the leader. For many people, Vox today means protesting, shaking things up, embarrassing, saying enough is enough. They have an effective digital machinery, they have ideas, and they have strong international patronage. Without so much external support, Podemos played that role on the left side a decade ago. They even surpassed 20% of the votes and approached seventy deputies. They were close to surpassing the PSOE. Pedro Sánchez prevented it, and Felipe González seems not to have forgiven him.
Vox and Aznar agree on one point: punishment for the events in Catalonia must reappear
Podemos was part of the final wake of Obama, when social networks operated with a Democratic algorithm. Elon Musk had not yet bought Twitter. A group of Political Science professors from the Complutense, who later ended up fighting among themselves, without an ice axe but with much bitterness, believed they saw a fantastic digital shortcut in the tortuous path of historical materialism. They scared the Socialist Party, managed to enter the Government, have notably influenced for ten years, but the PSOE, the main storehouse of political cunning operating in Spain, knew how to trap them by promising space, protection, and media shield to a new, kinder, and more pragmatic version of Podemos called Sumar. Sumar is today an empty convent, where the wind beats doors and windows. Yolanda Díaz has left the scene without waiting for the end of the legislature. If you don’t want me, I’m leaving. The PSOE does not collapse in the polls thanks to the misdeeds of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado and the willing voters of Sumar, who adore Sánchez.
Vox belongs to another moment. Vox is part of the phosphorescent wake of Trumpism in a Europe in critical condition, with the National Front galloping towards the presidency of the French Republic, and with the far right about to start winning regional elections in Germany. Awaiting the midterm elections in the United States, which Trump already threatens to blow up in November if the results are adverse to him, Vox is in a sweet moment. It is their moment.
They are beginning to act as a guide party of the right. They set the pace and fix ideas. They have politically won the regional electoral cycle that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has gifted them, they have imposed the motto of national priority in Andalusia, the most populous autonomous community in Spain. They set the pace and are the best-communicated Spanish political force with the United States Government. They inform and are informed. Didn’t José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero know this?
Attention to this fact: the U.S. State Department has just launched a five million dollar fund to help think tanks and civil groups friendly to Trumpism in various parts of the world. From Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has already warned that he does not want U.S. interference in the German regional elections. They are serious. They are creating the architecture to intervene in the decisive electoral battles that will take place in Europe next year. They are building their third international. Vox is not a right-wing Podemos. It is something else. It is a sign of protest and a sign of power. Depending on how things go in the 2027 elections in France (presidential), Spain, Italy, and Poland (legislative), the entire European framework will change direction.
The battle is European. In this context, it is relevant that Junts is deciding to confront Aliança Catalana ideologically. They want to be closer to León XIV than to Trump. They have listened to Jordi Pujol. It is significant that they decided this after the Luxembourg verdict. In Catalonia, on a small scale, the great European battles are always visualized. Aliança Catalana and Vox currently add up to a projected vote of 30% in the polls.
Vox’s opinion on the European endorsement of amnesty for Catalan independence is also relevant. It cannot be ignored. MEP Jorge Buxadé, a prominent member of the leadership core, has issued a challenge to the Popular Party: reversal of the Amnesty law in the next legislature. Will that be one of Vox’s conditions for Feijóo’s investiture?
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Feijóo says he wants to move on. He would like to have free hands with Junts and the PNV, still thinks about a motion of no confidence, that motion he has not yet dared to present; he would like a decimated, ashamed PSOE, with eighty deputies, with Sánchez rowing in galleys, a corrected PSOE with which he could agree on state policies under the blessing of Felipe González.
José María Aznar nervously corrects that script because he does not want to give more space to Vox. Aznar has just said that “the seditious aggression against the law cannot go unpunished.” Whoever can, let them do it. This will not end like this.
Summary. The PSOE resists more than expected thanks to the vote transfer from Sumar. And on the right, a new dilemma arises: move on from the procés or go to the general elections with the promise of a new punitive process in Catalonia. “Sedition cannot go unpunished.” Legal formulas would not be lacking in a country where veteran jurists are already imagining that Sánchez could be forced into impeachment invoking article 102 of the Constitution, under the accusation of “high treason.”
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Will the PSOE continue to hold?
Who rules the right?
