Six Spanish political parties support dictatorships, and all six are left-wing

There are well-known, public facts that are easily verifiable, but curiously, they never make the news in the media.

Pedro Sánchez's antidemocratic international and his friendly photos with dictators
Sánchez leads an organization with 11 partners who emerged from single parties of dictatorships

One of them is the one indicated in the title of this article, referring to Spanish political parties with a presence in Congress and that openly support dictatorships. Below we'll review which parties they are, but I'll give you a significant fact: all of them are on the left side of the political map.

This analysis uses data from the The Economist Democracy Index 2024, which includes 59 authoritarian regimes. The following lists the political parties with representation and the authoritarian regimes they support. Each country name contains a link to information about that party expressing support for that regime, and its position in The Economist index is indicated next to the country name. Parties marked in red are those that have made statements or gestures supporting dictatorships:

• Partido Popular (PP): There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime (see Note 1).
• Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE): has expressed support for the authoritarian regimes of Lebanon (109) and Palestine (112). Throughout his term, the leader of this party Pedro Sánchez has maintained cordial relations with other dictatorships (see Note 1).
• Vox: There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime.
• Sumar: support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba (135), Palestine (112) and Venezuela (142). In addition, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), to which the two Sumar ministers (Yolanda Díaz and Sira Rego) belong, has shown its support for the dictatorships of Belarus (152), China (135), North Korea (165), Iran (154) and Syria (163) and Vietnam (133).
• Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC): support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba (135), Palestine (112) and Venezuela (142).
• Junts per Catalunya: There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime.
• EH Bildu: support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba (135), Palestine (112) and Venezuela (142).
• Podemos: support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba (135), Palestine (112) and Venezuela (142).
• Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV): There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime.
• Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG): support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba (135), Palestine (112), Syria (163) and Venezuela (142). Furthermore, the Union of the Galician People (UPG), the majority party in the BNG coalition, has supported the dictatorships in China (145) and Vietnam (133).
• Coalición Canaria (CC): There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime.
• Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN): There are no statements or gestures of support for any authoritarian regime.

Thus, of the parties analyzed, six have expressed their support for dictatorships, and coincidentally, all six are left-wing, the same left that constantly labels parties of the democratic right as "fascist." Significantly, support for dictatorships increases as the left becomes more extreme. These left-wing parties are the ones that most boast of being democratic and the least hesitant to openly support dictatorships with socialist, communist, or Islamist ideologies.

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Note 1: I have not included the mere relationship of some parties with single-party dictatorships as a gesture of support, provided that this relationship does not imply gestures or declarations of support for those dictatorships. I already wrote an article about these relationships in 2024.

Note 2: Syria is included in the list of dictatorships since the democracy index was compiled during Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship. The 2025 index classifying the new Islamist government has not yet been published.

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Photo: Congreso de los Diputados.