THE RETURN OF THE RADICAL RIGHT IN SPAIN

Abstract

Despite the political pressure resulting from the surge of radical right-wing parties’ electoral success in the West—from the victories of President Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, to Matteo Salvini in Italy—Spain was, until recently, one of the few European countries considered to be invulnerable to this far-right trend. However, after nearly four decades of exceptionalism, the Spanish exclusion ended abruptly in 2018 with the ascendance of Vox, Spain’s newest radical right-wing party, into regional and national parliaments. Taking into consideration far-right parties’ commonly used ideologies of nativism and authoritarianism, this thesis analyzed the perceived contributing factors of immigration and Catalan separatism to determine if and how these two factors contributed to the rise of a Spanish radical right-wing party after the end of the Franco dictatorship. On examination of Spanish public opinion regarding immigration and mainstream political parties, this thesis determined that the issues of immigration and the Catalan separatism contributed to the increase in negative attitude toward both. However, it was not the issues themselves that led to the rise of Vox; this thesis concludes that it was ultimately the actions and inaction of the mainstream political parties and their failure to address the increasing public concern over these two issues that provided Vox the political opportunity to enter the mainstream political arena.