‘They tell the truth: Spanish town where 34.5% voted for far-right Vox – The Guardian

The barman glanced up at the sky over Ocaas elegant main square before dragging a couple of tables outside. Like much else in Spain, the recent weather could charitably be described as changeable.

On Sunday, the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE) won the countrys fourth general election in as many years, the far-right Vox stormed into third place, and the Citizens party once touted as the future of the Spanish centre ground collapsed into an ignominious heap.

Fewer than 48 hours later, the PSOE and the anti-austerity Podemos announced the preliminary coalition deal that had proved so elusive after the Socialists won the last election in April but failed to secure a majority.

Juan Francisco Cruz, a Vox supporter to his core, described the deal as just a horrible situation as he stopped for a mid-morning drink and a cigarette in the towns damp plaza mayor.

His dismay was lessened by Voxs national showing and by its performance in Ocaa, a town of about 11,000 people an hour south of Madrid, where the party overtook the PSOE to finish first.

The far-right grouping, led by Santiago Abascal, won 34.5% of the vote in the town, the PSOE 28.3%, the conservative Peoples party (PP) 21.6%, Unidas Podemos 7.2%, and Citizens 6.5%.

Three years ago, Vox had attracted 0.62% of the vote in Ocaa. Cruz, 58, had a simple explanation for the surge.

Theyre just right on everything, he said. Id always voted PP before but theyre very weak now and theres been a lot of corruption. Its also about immigration: there are too many illegal immigrants and they get help that Spaniards dont. Its just out of control and somebody needs to get a grip.

Another local Vox voter, 75-year-old Juan Montoya, offered his own, understated take on the main issue driving Voxs rise in towns such as Ocaa.

Catalonia is a big mess, he said. I voted Vox because I want order and I want peace.

Corruption scandals and the political deadlock prompted by the death of traditional two-party politics in Spain have bred disillusionment among millions of Spanish voters.

By seizing on that, weaponising the issue of Catalan independence and calling into question the countrys current system of regional self-government, Vox has succeeded in moving very far, very fast.

Abascal who not so long ago was ridiculed for a video in which he appeared on horseback to announce a reconquest has managed to cut through with a simple proposition: do voters want to be able to retire comfortably, or do they want to carry on footing the bill for the government of Spains 17 autonomous regions?

Or, as he pithily put it: Pensions or regional governments?

Cristina Arranz, a local businesswoman, said people were simply sick of the status quo.

They want someone who can offer them something credible, she said. Its easy to promise things but its difficult to deliver them. People are desperate, and when youre desperate you go to the extremes, whether of left or right.

Arranz, 56, said people were using Vox as a protest vote, just as people had begun to back Podemos in the aftermath of the economic crisis.

She said Citizens whose leader, Albert Rivera, resigned on Monday had found itself on the wrong side of history by refusing to join the Socialists successful attempt to unseat the corruption-mired PP last year, and by trying to compete with Vox by moving further to the right.

Both the PP and Citizens have also helped to legitimise Vox by enlisting its support to take power in Andaluca and Madrid in the past year.

Arranzs friend, Lola Carrero, said people were leaving the PP for Vox now that Abascal had slightly recalibrated his rhetoric.

Its basically the same people voting for the same ideas, she said. Vox have softened their message and its worked. Well see if they go back to it soon.

Pablo Simn, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid, said Voxs results in satellite towns around the Spanish capital and in places such as Ocaa suggested it was widening its socioeconomic base.

Vox is a party whose origins lie in the middle and upper middle-class vote people who used to vote for the PP and Citizens, he said.

But in these elections, it seems theyve done a bit better in relative terms among the rural and working classes. Were starting to see that working-class people who voted PP in the past are now turning towards Vox. As it grows, the party is developing a slightly more heterogenous electorate than it had before the April election.

Simn said Vox looked set to continue its growth, fuelled by media that sustain the partys momentum whether the coverage is positive or negative.

Having capitalised on voter discontent and the question of Spanish unity, he added, the party may now ape other successful European far-right parties by adopting chauvinist strategies over the welfare state.

Vox still hasnt really started doing that, but Im sure they know that its a strategy that would help them grow, said Simn.

If there is a PSOE-Podemos government backed by Catalan pro-independence parties, that will only help Vox keep hammering away when it comes to territorial questions and general political discontent. Add to that a discourse over immigrants taking up resources and youve got three elements that could help Vox grow still more at the next election.

There is much that is familiar and contemporary in Voxs appetite for border walls, in its paradoxical, if not hypocritical, antipathy towards elites, and in its demonisation of immigrants.

And then there is the nostalgia that verges on the atavistic. Juan Montoya hankers after the peace and co-existence of the past and cannot fathom the Socialists decision to exhume Franco from the Valley of the Fallen last month.

What has it achieved? he wondered. Its just revived tensions between people. They should just have left him in his tomb.

Juan Francisco Cruz, meanwhile, mourns the political correctness of the present.

Its a lie to say that Vox are racist. Theyre just the only party that has the balls to come out and tell the truth about things.

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'They tell the truth: Spanish town where 34.5% voted for far-right Vox - The Guardian