Analysis: Can Spain’s election be a rallying cry for the European left?
By Ishaan Tharoor Ishaan Tharoor Reporter covering foreign affairs, geopolitics and history Email Bio Follow April 30 at 12:59 AM Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter.
Vox’s emergence ahead of the election — and the prospect of its joining a ruling coalition alongside the center right — appeared to galvanize support for Socialist leader and incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. He promised to push back against ultranationalist politics in a country that still lives with the memory and traumas of decades of fascist dictatorship.
— Pedro Sánchez April 28, 2019 The Socialists’ victory in Spain does indeed send a message. For the past couple of years, we’ve grown accustomed to talking about the steady demise of center-left parties in the West. In Europe, in particular, social-democratic factions that were once traditional mainstays in their nations’ politics faced debilitating, if not fatal, setbacks. From France to the Netherlands, Germany to Italy, center-left parties are now shadows of what they once were.
Analysts even gestured at an emerging potential bulwark of parties in Europe that remain doggedly pro-Brussels and in favor of more inclusive politics across the continent.
At the same time, Mudde said, the Socialists’ win shows that “social democratic parties can still can be successful as openly social democratic parties in power,” without having to turn to anti-immigrant politics or equivocate with parties further to the right. What’s crucial, Mudde added, was Sánchez’s ability to focus his political pitch on socioeconomic issues, including inequality, rather than the siren song of identity inflaming politics elsewhere in the West.
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