Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: People’s Party (Spain)

  • Spanish Center-Right Makes the Same Mistake Again

    Pablo Casado
    Spain’s Pablo Casado attends a meeting with other European conservative party leaders in Brussels, June 30 (EPP)

    Spain’s center-right parties haven’t learned anything from the last election.

    When they tried to outflank the far right, it only helped Vox. The neo-Francoist party got 10 percent support then and polls as high as 15 percent now. And still the mainstream parties try to best it.

    This is hopeless. Vox is always willing to go a step further. (more…)

  • Conservatives Put Party Before Country. They’ve Harmed Both

    Mariano Rajoy
    Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy looks out the window of a cable car in Sóller, Majorca, June 22, 2016 (PP)

    Center-right leaders in Britain, Spain and the United States have put the interests of their parties ahead of the good of their countries. Both their parties and their countries have suffered as a result. (more…)

  • Spanish Politicians Need to Come to Grips with Coalition Politics

    Pablo Iglesias Pedro Sánchez
    Spanish party leaders Pablo Iglesias and Pedro Sánchez speak in Madrid, February 5, 2016 (PSOE)

    Spanish politicians are still coming to grips with coalition politics.

    Both at the national and the regional level, parties are reluctant to make compromises and blaming each other for making deals with different parties. (more…)

  • Vox Is Unreliable Partner for Spanish Right

    Santiago Abascal
    Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal gives a speech in Valencia, February 22, 2018 (Vox España)

    Spain’s far-right Vox (Voice) is turning out to be an unreliable partner for the mainstream parties of the right.

    • In Andalusia, where Vox won legislative seats for the first time in December, the party agreed to support a minority government of the conservative People’s Party and liberal Citizens but then made additional demands, including money for a program about Spanish colonialism and cuts to a fund that provides redress to victims of the Franco dictatorship as well as to groups that help immigrants.
    • In the Madrid regional assembly, Vox has reneged on its support for the People’s Party’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso and is demanding additional concessions to bring the center-right to power.
    • In Murcia, Vox is refusing to support a center-right government unless the party is involved in drafting its policies.

    At least they’re up front about it in Murcia. It’s not unreasonable for Vox to demand something in return for its support. Except that every time it gets what it wants, it asks for something more.

    The People’s Party and Citizens have themselves to blame. They shifted to the right in an attempt to outflank Vox and ruled out deals with the center-left. That has given Vox, with less than 10 percent support nationally, disproportionate power. It knows the mainstream parties have no alternative. (more…)

  • After Historic Defeat, Spain’s Center-Right U-Turns

    Jyrki Katainen Pablo Casado
    European commissioner Jyrki Katainen listens to Spanish People’s Party leader Pablo Casado during a congress of the European People’s Party in Helsinki, Finland, November 8, 2018 (EPP)

    Spain’s conservative party leader, Pablo Casado, is belatedly appealing to the center after presiding over the worst parliamentary election result in his People’s Party’s history.

    Support for the formerly dominant center-right party went down from 33 to 17 percent in the election last month. The People’s Party lost more than half its seats in Congress and now has only nine more than its biggest competitor, the liberal Citizens.

    Casado’s lurch to the right on everything from abortion to Catalan separatism to immigration did not convince far-right voters, who preferred the nativist Vox, but it did scare away moderates, who voted for the Citizens or Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ Socialists instead. (more…)

  • Sánchez Wins in Spain But Could Need Separatists for Majority

    • Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez won the election on Sunday with 29 percent support for his center-left Socialist Party.
    • But his alliance with the far-left Podemos does not have a majority, forcing Sánchez to negotiate with parties from the Basque Country and Catalonia.
    • The conservative People’s Party imploded, losing half its votes to the center-right Citizens and the far-right Vox, which enters Congress for the first time. (more…)

  • Spanish Conservatives Balk at Terms of Deal with Far Right

    María Dolores Cospedal Alberto Núñez Feijóo
    Former Spanish defense minister María Dolores Cospedal confers with President Alberto Núñez Feijóo of Galicia during a People’s Party congress in Seville, April 7, 2018 (PP)

    Senior conservatives in Spain have balked at the terms set by the far-right party Vox to support their bid to form a center-right government in Andalusia.

    Vox, which won twelve out of 109 seats in the regional legislature in December — enough to give the People’s Party and the liberal Citizens a majority — has made various demands, including:

    • Overturning a law on violence against women in favor of one that is gender-neutral.
    • Stopping what Vox calls “the massive windfall of subsidies for supremacist feminist associations.”
    • Overturning a law promoting gender equality.
    • Revoking LGBT protections. Vox argues, “Spain isn’t a homophobic country that needs special laws.” Indeed, they claim lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Andalusians enjoy “unjustified privileges” under the law. So much for homophobia having been eradicated.
    • Repealing historical memory laws which Vox argues impose, “in a totalitarian manner,” a “biased” version of Francoist history.
    • Returning education, justice and police powers to Madrid.
    • Cutting funding for public media by 50 percent.
    • Expelling 52,000 undocumented immigrants.
    • Protecting Andalusian culture and traditions, including the flamenco and bullfighting, by law. (more…)

  • Kurzism Doesn’t Travel Well

    Sebastian Kurz Laurent Wauquiez Michel Barnier
    Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz meets with French Republican party leaders Laurent Wauquiez and Michel Barnier in Salzburg, September 19, 2018 (EPP)

    The Financial Times wonders if Austria’s Sebastian Kurz is the savior of Europe’s center-right or an enabler of the far right.

    His supporters, including the liberal-minded former prime minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, see the Austrian as the antidote to Orbanism:

    He talks about an open world, internationalism and is pro-European. But he is pragmatic about solving issues. And one of the big issues is immigration.

    Critics argue that by taking a hard line on immigration, Kurz is legitimizing the far right. “You don’t fight fire with kerosene,” according to former chancellor and former Social Democratic Party leader Christian Kern. (more…)

  • Socialists Lose Election in Andalusia, Far Right Breaks Through

    The right and far right did better in elections in Andalusia on Sunday than the polls had projected, possibly ending forty years of left-wing rule in the most populous region of Spain. (more…)

  • Harder Line Neither Helps Nor Hurts Spain’s People’s Party — For Now

    Jyrki Katainen Pablo Casado
    European commissioner Jyrki Katainen listens to Spanish People’s Party leader Pablo Casado during a congress of the European People’s Party in Helsinki, Finland, November 8 (EPP)

    Pablo Casado has pulled Spain’s conservative People’s Party to the right, taking a harder line on everything from abortion to Catalonia to Gibraltar to immigration.

    So far, it has neither helped nor hurt his party in the polls. (more…)

  • The Spanish Right’s Gibraltar Hypocrisy

    Gibraltar
    Passengers disembark an easyJet plane at Gibraltar Airport, September 29, 2015 (Shutterstock/Nigel Jarvis)

    When Spain’s conservative People’s Party was in power, it promised not to exploit Britain’s exit from the EU to renegotiate the status of Gibraltar.

    Now that the party is out of power, it blames the ruling Socialists for failing to do just that. (more…)

  • Spanish Right Takes Harder Line on Catalonia, Immigration

    Pablo Casado
    Pablo Casado greets members of the executive committee of Spain’s People’s Party in Barcelona, July 26 (PP)

    The new Spanish conservative party leader, Pablo Casado, is making good on his promise to move the People’s Party to the right.

    • In talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who leads a minority left-wing government, Casado refused to support dialogue with Catalan parties that want to break away from Spain.
    • Separately, he argued Spain cannot “absorb millions of Africans who want to come to Europe in search of a better future.”

    Both positions mark a hardening from those of Casado’s predecessor, and the previous prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. (more…)

  • With Casado, Spain’s People’s Party Turns Right

    Pablo Casado has won the leadership of Spain’s conservative People’s Party with 57 to 42 percent support from party delegates.

    Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the former deputy prime minister, was considered the establishment favorite. Her defeat signals a desire for a more right-wing program. Casado’s economic policy is more liberal and he takes a hard line against the Catalan independence movement. (more…)

  • Spain’s People’s Party Primary, Explained

    The battle for the leadership of the Spanish right is now a two-person race: Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and Pablo Casado have emerged from a poll of party members as the frontrunners.

    Sáenz de Santamaría, the former deputy prime minister and a confidant of outgoing People’s Party leader Mariano Rajoy, won 37 percent support against 34 percent for Casado, an ambitious right-wing lawmaker and the party’s communications chief.

    Former defense minister María Dolores de Cospedal placed third with 26 percent. She is expected to throw her support behind Casado. (more…)

  • Rajoy Steps Down as Party Leader. Here Are His Possible Successors

    Mariano Rajoy has stepped down as leader of Spain’s center-right People’s Party.

    Resignation was inevitable after Rajoy became the first prime minister in Spanish democratic history to be removed from office last week. The opposition Socialists cobbled together a majority consisting of left-wing and regional parties to end the conservative’s six-and-a-half year tenure. (more…)