An interesting analysis from Italy about the current situation of the center-right in Spain

@ElentirENG ES 9·05·2023 · 18:39 0

We are accustomed to many national and foreign analysts approaching Spanish reality with distorted points of view.

A sensible reflection on the right-wing written by Francisco José Contreras
The challenge and the need to keep together the three families of the first right

That is why it catches my attention to read something as realistic and as well-argued as an article published by Renato Cristin on August 29 in L'Opinione delle Libertà, an Italian liberal-conservative media. Cristin, born in 1958, is professor of Philosophical Hermeneutics at the University of Trieste and has been director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin and scientific director of the Fondazione Liberal.

In March 2022, the Disenso Foundation (linked to Vox) published an interesting essay by Cristin about the challenges of conservative liberalism. Likewise, he is the co-author of the book "Reflexiones sobre una nueva derecha" (Reflexions on a new right), recently published together with Vanessa Vallejo, Agustín Laje and Francisco José Contreras, a reference book for the liberal-conservative right in speaking countries Hispanic

In the aforementioned article from L'Opinione delle Libertà (you can read here an automatic translation into English), Cristin talks about the failure of center-right (regarding its expectations) in the general elections of July 23 in Spain and distances itself from analysts who attribute what happened to Vox's right-wingism. Regarding the loss of 620,000 votes by this party, in relation to the general elections of November 2019, Cristin points out:

"There are two main causes of this hemorrhage and the consequent failure of the center-right. The first is attributable to the PP, which did not treat Vox as an ally but as a competitor, which in the proportional system is formally admissible, but essentially incorrect when a coalition is required to govern to obtain an absolute majority of seats. Nothing alienates and disincentivizes voters more than the impression of discord between parties that should govern together, and the treacherous appeal to the useful vote , which the PP has used as a cudgel against its potential ally."

Cristin also believes that Vox has part of the responsibility for that result which reduced its electoral base from 3.6 to 3 million voters:

"The second cause is that of Vox, which has lost consensus because it has not known how to act as a pole of attraction for the different orientations that make up the varied front of the Spanish right, not creating the necessary balance between them to broaden the consensus, and because this internal imbalance has highlighted a tension between the social and revolutionary right and the liberal and conservative right, with a clear shift in favor of the former, which is not appreciated by a part of the party and is not welcomed by a part of the electorate. Supporters of the right today, in almost all of Europe, want an Atlanticist party, which does not show the slightest collusion with Russia, which is the clear enemy of Europe; a party that exercises constructive criticism towards the EU, aware that the EU is the container of European nations and peoples, and that it is the duty of the European right to fully commit to giving the EU a form and content worthy of the tradition and identity of these nations and peoples."

Cristin attributes the resignation of the former spokesperson of the Vox parliamentary group, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, to a"disagreement withthat anti-American tendency, covertly pro-Russian and clearly critical of NATO, which is increasingly gaining more space in the partyand to which Santiago Abascal, although he does not share it, seems incapable of opposing it." The fact is that Espinosa himself alleged family reasons for his resignation, Therefore, this part of the analysis, like those done by other authors inside and outside Spain, is based on an assumption.

The Italian professor points out that "Vox was caught in the double attack, although of a different nature, coming from the left and the center". Cristin, recognizing that Spanish society is more inclined to the left than Italian society, suggests for Spain a coalition like the one that led Giorgia Meloni to become Prime Minister of Italy.

Personally, I am skeptical and reluctant about the idea of that coalition. I am skeptical because, despite the first public meeting held today between Feijóo and Abascal, exhibiting good harmony (I wish we had seen something like this three months ago), there are still important differences between the PP and Vox. And I am also reluctant because, knowing the PP, such a coalition could be a way to engulf Vox, a party whose existence is very necessary in Spain, precisely because of the drift towards the center-left that is coming. suffering the PP.

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Photo: Vox Congreso.