On Sunday October 7, the Spanish far right party Vox achieved what they had been looking for for a long time: their baptism as a relevant political actor in the Spanish public sphere. They did it by filling the Vistalegre palace in Madrid with 10,000 supporters and leaving a thousand people out for lack of space. In the past few years, Vistalegre has symbolically become the venue used by Podemos for their annual congresses. The choice of the venue for this event is not coincidental: Vox is explicitly looking for parallels with the first Podemos. They want to turn the political indignation of a certain sector of the Spanish right into political capital. And to achieve this they hope to use the springboard of the European elections. In this sense, it’s fundamental to note that there are people within the Vox party who are studying the political campaign and strategy of Podemos in 2014, when the party entered candidates for the 2014 European Parliament election, polling with 7.98% of the national vote.[...]
In the arena, well beyond the burladero, there is a first row where writers, historians, journalists and even bullfighters, all identifying within the far right spectrum in Spain, gather together looking at the audience. However, the absences are more surprising: Vox had invited international personalities from other European political parties, both from the ENL parliamentary group (which brings together in Brussels the National Front, the Northern League, the Austrian FPÖ or the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders) and from the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists, where Polish, Czech and British conservatives meet. But none of them attended. Not even Steve Bannon, whose presence was speculated a few weeks before.[...]
Vox’s strategy for the next year’s electoral cycle rests on three pillars: appeal to a vote of conviction, use politically incorrect language and indicate very clearly who the enemies are. Namely: the Catalan independence movement, feminism and immigration.With these wicks, the party led by Santiago Abascal will try to be involved in all the decisive issue on Spanish agenda and, in the end, win everything. Some polls indicate that Vox will foreseeable reach parliamentary representation in the European Parliament and that it could be decisive when it comes to deciding the balances between left and right in some regions such as Madrid or Murcia.
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