As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear that the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Franco era to enter Spain’s national government.
Last month, after Spain’s conservative and hard-right parties crushed the left in local elections, the winners in Elche, a small southeastern town known for an ancient sculpture and shoe exports, signed an agreement with consequences for the future of Spain — and the rest of Europe.
The candidate from the conservative Popular Party had a chance to govern, but he needed the hard-right Vox party, which, in return for its support during council votes, received the deputy mayor position and a new administrative body to defend the traditional family. They inked their deal under the cross of the local church.
“This coalition model could be a good model for the whole of Spain,” said Pablo Ruz Villanueva, Elche’s new mayor, referring to upcoming national elections on July 23, which most polls suggest will oust the liberal prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. The new deputy mayor from Vox, Aurora Rodil Martínez, went further: “My party will do everything that’s necessary to make that happen.”
If Ms. Rodil’s wish comes true, with Vox joining a coalition with more moderate conservatives, it would become the first right-wing party since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to enter the national government.
The rise of Vox is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties surging in popularity and, in some cases, gaining power by entering governments as junior partners.
The parties have differences but generally fear the economic ramifications of globalization, and say that their countries will lose their national identities to migration, often from non-Christian or nonwhite-majority countries, but also to an empowered European Union that they believe looks after only the elites. Their steady advances have added urgency to a now pressing debate among liberals over how to outflank a suddenly more influential right.
Some argue that the hard right needs to be marginalized, as was the case for more than a half-century after World War II. Others fear that the hard right has grown too large to be ignored and that the only choice is to bring them into governing in the hopes of normalizing them.
In Sweden, the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and has given it some sway in policymaking. In Finland, where the right has ascended into the governing coalition, the nationalist Finns party has risked destabilizing it, with a key minister from that far-right party resigning last month after it emerged that he had made “Heil Hitler” jokes.
On Friday, the Dutch government led by Mark Rutte, a conservative and the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, collapsed because more centrist parties in his coalition considered his efforts to curb migration too harsh. Mr. Rutte has had to guard his right flank against surging populists and a longstanding hard-right party.
In Italy, the far right has taken power on its own. But so far, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, politically reared in parties born from the ashes of Fascism and a close ally of Spain’s Vox, has governed more moderately than many in Europe expected — bolstering some analysts’ argument that the reality of governing can be a moderating force.
Elsewhere, hard-right parties are breaking through in countries where they had recently seemed contained.
In France, the once fringe party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen has become an established force as entrenched anger against President Emmanuel Macron has newly exploded over issues like pension changes and the integration and policing of the country’s minority communities. He is not running again and the election is years away, but liberals across Europe shuddered when she passed him in some recent polls.
And in Germany, where the right has long been taboo, economic uncertainty and a new surge in arrivals by asylum seekers has helped resurrect the far-right Alternative for Germany party. It is now the leading party in the formerly Communist eastern states, according to polls, and is even gaining popularity in the wealthier and more liberal west.
While the parties in different countries do not have identical proposals, they generally want to close the doors to and cut benefits off for migrants; hit the pause, or reverse, button when it comes to L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and stake out more protectionist trade policies. Some are suspicious of NATO and dubious about climate change and sending arms to Ukraine.
In a seeming recognition that the continent’s political complexion is changing, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Spain this past week that the European Union needed to deliver tangible results in order to counter “extremist” forces.
In Spain, where the conservative Popular Party has a good chance of finishing first in the coming election, Esteban González Pons, a leading party official, said that bringing hard-right parties, like Vox, into government was a way to neutralize them. But he acknowledged that strategy carried risks.
“First, the bad scenario: We can legitimize Vox,” he said.
“Then, there is a second chance: We can normalize Vox,” he said, adding that if they governed well, “Vox will be another party, a conservative party inside of the system.”
For now, the situation is fluid and there are indications that Mr. Sánchez and his leftist allies are gaining support. Vox also appears to be losing ground as the Sánchez campaign and well-known artists and liberals throughout Spain have focused on the threat of conservatives bringing Vox into the government.
Spain seemed in recent years to be a bright spot for liberals. Under Mr. Sánchez, Spain has kept inflation low, reduced tensions with separatists in Catalonia, and increased the growth rate, pensions and the minimum wage. He is also generally popular in the European Union.
But the alliance between Mr. Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces has fed resentment among many voters.
Mr. González Pons, a leading official of the Popular Party, does not think that worries about Vox possibly joining forces with his conservatives are entirely off base. “We are pro-European and Vox is not,” he said, adding that Vox “would prefer something like a general Brexit, for all the countries to recover their own sovereignty.” He said Vox had views on gay rights and violence against women that “are red lines for us.”
Those lines started to show as the new leaders of Elche sat on leather armchairs in the mayor’s office last week and sought to put up a united front. Mr. Ruz, the mayor from the conservative Popular Party, and his deputy from Vox, Ms. Rodil, took turns bashing the prime minister. But when pressed, the mayor acknowledged that his party recognized gay marriage, and that he was queasier about hard-right parties like Alternative for Germany than his “partner.” Still, he said, the Popular Party and Vox had similar voters, just different approaches to “implementation.”
“Can I say something regarding that?” Ms. Rodil said with a coy smile. “We have a stance that is maybe a little firmer.” Vox, she said, believes in the “sovereignty of nations” and would like to make it more difficult for women to have abortions, positions that she said some people in the mayor’s party “do not defend.” She said the “ambiguous” stances of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party’s leader, were “worrying.”
Many, instead, are worried about Vox.
“We have seen populism, supported by the center-right, grow in small towns,” said Carlos González Serna, the former socialist mayor of Elche, who lost the election. He said that instead of cordoning off the extreme right, mainstream conservatives had given it an “umbilical cord” of legitimacy.
The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party amid a slush-fund scandal in 2013. The party’s popularity grew in 2018 as more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country. The nationalist Vox was also well positioned to exploit a backlash to the Catalonian independence movement.
But Vox has also found support among Spaniards unhappy with their country’s progressive shift on climate change and social issues, including gay rights and feminism. Their campaign billboards have included candidates throwing L.G.B.T.Q., feminist and other symbols in the trash. In the town of Náquera, near Elche, the newly elected mayor from the Vox party has ordered the removal of Pride flags from municipal buildings.
One resident, a 45-year-old truck driver named Maximo Ibañez, said he voted for Vox because the party spoke clearly, but also because he feels that Spain’s pioneering laws to explicitly protect women against gender-based violence — complete with special courts and tougher sentences — discriminate against men.
“It’s women who have the right to presumption of innocence here,” he said.
One of Vox’s regional leaders has joked that some women were too unattractive to be gang raped, and another said that “women are more belligerent because they don’t have penises.”
Ms. Rodil, the new deputy mayor of Elche with Vox, said that her party had no quarrel with women, just with the notion that domestic violence should be seen through gender-based ideology, and that a man, “just for being a man, is bad, that he has a gene that makes him violent.”
She argued that Mr. Sánchez’s government had endangered women with botched legislation that had the potential to let sex offenders out of jail. Mr. Sánchez has apologized for the inadvertent effects of the so-called yes-is-yes law, which was intended to categorize all non-consensual sex as rape, but which, through changes to sentencing requirements, has risked reducing jail time or setting free potentially hundreds of sex offenders.
As many in Europe say the time has come to start taking right-wing parties more seriously, some voters in Elche regretted not having taken Vox seriously enough.
“I didn’t think that they were going to form a government and the fact that they have has surprised me,” Isabel Chinchilla, 67, said in a plaza that features three statues of the Virgin Mary. “I will vote in the national elections so that this doesn’t happen again, because they are very reactionary in their vision of society.”
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Four militants attacked a police station and killed two security forces in southeastern Iran, state TV reported on Saturday.
The armed group attacked a police station in Zahedan, a city in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province, about 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) from the border with Pakistan, triggering a shootout. Two security forces were killed, the report said.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said in a statement that the four militants were killed.
The report quoted Alireza Marhamati, the province’s deputy governor, as saying the militants were trying to gain access to the police station and were equipped with grenades, but did not elaborate further.
State-run IRNA news agency also reported that authorities on Saturday hanged two men involved in the October 26 deadly attack on Shah Cheragh mosque in the city of Shiraz, the second holiest site in Iran.
The report said the two were members of the extremist Islamic State group and were behind the deadly attack that killed at least 13 and wounded 30 people.
Semi-official ISNA and Tasnim news agencies said that the two were publicly executed in the city of Shiraz.
The gunmen who executed the attack, identified as Sobhan Komrouni, died in a hospital in southern Iran, days after the Oct. 26 attack, from injuries sustained during his arrest.
State TV at the time blamed the attack on “takfiris,” a term that refers to Sunni Muslim extremists who have targeted the country’s Shiite majority in the past.
The attack came as protesters elsewhere in Iran marked 40 days since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody ignited the biggest anti-government movement in over a decade. It appeared to be unrelated to the demonstrations.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is due to meet King Willem-Alexander on Saturday, to discuss a caretaker administration the day after his centre-right government collapsed following a row on migration policies.
THE HAGUE, July 8 (Reuters) - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is due to meet King Willem-Alexander on Saturday, to discuss a caretaker administration the day after his centre-right government collapsed following a row on migration policies.
The resignation of the coalition government means parliament will most likely be dissolved and the Dutch will go to the polls in a general election, expected to be held in November.
Rutte, 56, in power since 2010, is already the Netherlands' longest serving prime minister. He told a press conference late on Friday that he'd like to run for a fifth term but would consult with his party before making a final decision.
"If you were to ask me to decide now, the answer is obviously 'yes'," he told journalists, but added "it's also up to the party".
The crisis in Dutch politics came after Rutte's conservative VVD party pushed to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the Netherlands.
Tensions came to a head this week, when Rutte demanded support for a proposal to limit the arrival of children of war refugees who are already in the Netherlands and to make families wait at least two years before they can be reunited.
This latest proposal was opposed by the small Christian Union and liberal D66, causing a stalemate and ultimately the collapse of government.
As head of state, King Willem-Alexander is expected to ask Rutte's coalition to stay on as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after new elections, a process which in the fractured Dutch political landscape usually takes months.
Not since the 2015-2016 migration crisis has immigration been such a fault line in European politics.
Support for Germany's far right AfD has surged over the last six months. And in Spain polls suggest far right Vox party could enter government following the snap elections later this month.
In the Netherlands, migration is somewhat overshadowed by farmers' protests against government plans to limit nitrogen emissions, a policy they say will spell the end of many farms.
Farmers' protest party BBB became the biggest party in the March provincial elections which determine the make-up of the Dutch senate.
In the latest Ipsos poll, carried out a week before the government collapse, Rutte's VVD is projected to remain the biggest party in the 150-seat parliament with 28 seats. But BBB is predicted to surge from just one seat now to 23, making it the second largest party in parliament.
While BBB is mostly focused on the government's nitrogen emissions plans it also supports a stricter migration policy and has suggested a possible yearly cap of 15,000 asylum seekers.
The Netherlands already has a one of Europe's toughest immigration policies. Asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by a third last year to over 46,000, and the government has projected they could increase to more than 70,000 this year - topping the previous high of 2015.
Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Ros Russell
Far-Right Parties Are Rising to Power Around Europe. Is Spain Next? (www.nytimes.com)
As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear that the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Franco era to enter Spain’s national government.
4 militants attack a police station and kill 2 security forces in southeast Iran, state TV says (apnews.com)
Iran’s state TV says four militants attacked a police station with grenades in the country's southeast.
Dutch Prime Minister Rutte to update king on government collapse (www.reuters.com)
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is due to meet King Willem-Alexander on Saturday, to discuss a caretaker administration the day after his centre-right government collapsed following a row on migration policies.