Spain goes to the polls to decide its next government on Sunday, and a hard-right coalition is looking likely.

The most likely government to emerge - most analysts predict - will be a coalition including a hard-right nationalist party for the first time in Spain since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

More left-leaning Spaniards are frantically texting contacts, urging them to make sure to vote - despite the heat and it being holiday time for many - to “stop the fascists” in their tracks.The rhetoric this election season has been toxic, with voters becoming increasingly polarised.

It’s a fight over values, traditions and about what being Spanish should mean in 2023.

This kind of heated identity debate isn’t peculiar to Spain. Think of Italy, France, Brazil or the post-Trumpian debate in the US.

At EU HQ in Brussels, there are huge concerns about a resurgence of hard-right nationalist parties across Europe.

  • bouh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know the specifics of Spain politics much, just that there are specifics like Catalonia and Gibraltar on top of the rest.

    Meanwhile everywhere in the world the left parties are failling at the same time media are taken by hard right activist. Propaganda works at full force, and liberals (in south Europe that’s center right) are siding hard with the fascists to decrease the influence of the left.

    Left is not without its own failings. Ironically the fights for societal freedom and ecology are quite liberal in their execution and not very inclusive. Many people are left behind with climate change and the fight for women and sexual rights is frontal and basically tell people to agree or gtfo. Well, they do gtfo then to the other side that talk to poor people: fascists.