Is a Conservative Spain in the Offing?

Could Spain be on the verge of a conservative moment? The call by the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, for early elections raises for Spain’s right the prospect of a chance to govern. Polls suggest that a majority of voters, some 52 percent, intend to back either the center-right People’s Party or the rightist Vox movement. If such estimates are vindicated, it could spell progress on such issues as migration and defense, where Mr. Sanchez has failed to lead.“You, the Spanish people, must decide what role you wish to play in this era, and what role you want Spain to play,” Mr. Sanchez averred in an address to the country. He warned against a “far-right wave that drives regression wherever it governs” and contrasted his leftist agenda of “openness, social justice, and environmental responsibility.” Yet despite growth under Mr. Sanchez, Politico reports, inflation has exceeded wage gains and voters are dissatisfied.“AT LAST” was the response from the People’s Party, which last held power in 2018, in a suggestion that the bloc senses the wind at its back. The short notice of the parliamentary election, slated for November 29, has “caught Spain’s fractured far-left parties scrambling to regroup,” per Politico, posing “a problem for Sánchez’s Socialists,” who could have a hard time forging a “viable electoral alliance.”It is testament to the wobbly condition of Mr. Sanchez’s coalition that the election was triggered not by frustrations over his handling of immigration issues, but by a failed vote on housing legislation. Spanish politics have been roiled for months by the incursion in July of a wave of Moroccan migrants who flooded into the enclave of Ceuta, belying Mr. Sanchez’s protestations over the integrity of Spain’s “sovereignty.”The premier’s defense of Spanish borders, though, was undermined by his grant of a sweeping amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. As these columns asked, “if that doesn’t amount to an incentive to jump the border, what does?” Mr. Sanchez faces, too, what the Financial Times calls “public disgust over a swirl of corruption cases against people close to the prime minister,” even including his wife, who faces trial but denies wrongdoing.Mr. Sanchez has been focusing on Mideast conflicts as a distraction from his own deteriorating standing at home. He has been at the forefront of European opposition to aiding the Israeli-American war effort against Iran. The premier, too, calls for the suspension of the European Union’s ties with Israel and, pointing to his push to prosecute Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, touts his record of condemning “genocidal figures while others remain silent.”A new government offers the welcome prospect, the German Marshall Fund’s Kristina Kausch says, of “a more conventionally Atlanticist and less confrontational tone toward the White House,” plus “strong support for NATO and Ukraine.” A coalition with VOX, per Ms. Kausch, would likely mean “higher military expenditures, closer alignment with the Trump administration, a more pro-Israel stance,” and tighter migration policies.Conservatives after Ceuta wield “territorial integrity” as a cudgel against the socialists, Le Monde reports. No wonder, then, that Mr. Sanchez seeks to center the election on housing costs. Political scientist Oriol Bartomeus suggests that Mr. Sanchez’s class warfare rhetoric aims to sow a “confrontation that pits the representatives of the people against the representatives of the rich.” That’s a sideshow from the substantive policy issues at stake in this election.

Is a Conservative Spain in the Offing?

Is a Conservative Spain in the Offing?

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