Far-right targets women’s rights and could dominate Spanish elections

The party Vox Spain’s far-right looks set to continue its meteoric rise in Sunday’s general election and intends to use its growing influence to reverse decades of progress in women’s rights by blocking access to abortion, repealing legislation on gender violence and closing the Equality Ministry.

The party, formed just a decade ago, could become a political leader and member of Spain’s next coalition government after the vote, according to opinion polls.

Feminist activists are concerned about the possibility of a throwback to a time when Spanish women had very limited rights, with one activist telling the CNN that Vox’s entry into the national government would mean “going back in time 40 or 50 years in one go”.

Following a trend that is gaining momentum across Europe, Spain is set to swing to the right on Sunday after several years of left-wing rule. An average of final opinion polls compiled by Reuters on July 17 predicts the conservative Popular Party (PP) will win about 140 of the 350 seats in the legislature and will need to form a coalition to govern.

Joining Vox, which is expected to receive 36 seats, would give a right-wing coalition a slim working majority.

How did we get here

Current Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has announced early parliamentary elections after the ruling coalition of his Socialist Party (PSOE) and its left-wing partners suffered major setbacks in regional and local elections in May.

The PP made huge gains, defeating incumbent coalition members in several key regional and municipal governments, setting the stage and tone for Sunday’s election.

Entering a coalition with Vox would be controversial for the nominally centre-right PP. However, the party has struck deals to govern with Vox support in several regional administrations in recent years, despite criticism that it was helping to legitimize far-right policies.

Vox was founded in 2013 and its popularity has rapidly increased. In 2018, it became the first far-right party to win seats in a regional government since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. In 2019, it became the third largest party in Spain’s National Congress of Deputies.

Polls indicate the party is likely to win fewer seats in this poll than it did in the last election, but if it makes the ruling coalition, it would mark a new stage in Vox’s rise from fringe party to insurgent political force.

According to Paloma Román Marugan, professor of political science at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), the party’s platform focuses on a hard-line stance on illegal immigration, the desire to maintain Spain’s territorial integrity in the face of independence movements in regions such as Catalonia, and opposition to what it calls gender ideology.

election promises

In its manifesto, Vox promises to reduce regional autonomy, replace autonomous regional police – such as the Mossos d’Esquadra in Catalonia – with the national Guardia Civil, and impose tougher sentences on rapists and pedophiles, in addition to reversing a law that guaranteed equality for LGBTQ people, only published in March 2023.

The Vox manifesto also states that it will work for the “elimination of all gender legislation”. He wants to close the Ministry of Equality, which has been under attack by Spain’s right-wing parties since it was created in 2008 to implement gender equality policies, and which party leader Santiago Abascal has said is full of “psychopaths”.

Instead, Vox wants to replace that with a family ministry, which would be responsible for promoting higher birth rates and a narrow “traditional” view of family life.

His manifesto also proposes the repeal of a series of laws introduced in recent decades that seek to enshrine women’s rights, such as access to abortion or better protection against gender violence. For example, Vox wants to get rid of the gender violence law and replace it with one “that protects all potential victims of violence in a domestic environment”.

That proposal reflects the party’s denial that gender-based violence exists, activists said. Meanwhile, more than 1,200 Spanish women have been killed by current or former partners since 2003, according to data from the Ministry of Equality. Demonstrations calling for better protections for women have drawn thousands of people in recent years and activists say Vox’s proposed change in legislation would only put women in even more danger.

Many also wonder about the long-term effects of the PP, one of Spain’s largest historic political parties, entering into an alliance with such a group.

“The PP supposedly does not share these policies, but it seems that it is choosing to sacrifice these advances in rights in order to come to power,” said Román. “It is a little worrying for the country that he (the PP) is able to say that to be in government he is willing to give up on issues that were really not even up for debate in Spanish society, we had turned that page”.

Vox did not respond to a request for comment from CNN . The PP responded, but only to refer to the CNN interviews given by party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo during the campaign.

“A very dangerous confrontation in Spanish society”

Laura Nuño Gómez, political scientist, feminist activist and professor at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, explains that while this type of adverse reaction to the redistribution of power in society can be seen in many countries, the situation in Spain is aggravated by the pace of change since the end of the Franco dictatorship, under which women’s rights were severely limited.

Just 10 years after the end of the dictatorship, Spain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union, and had to make profound changes to meet the organization’s demands in terms of equality, Nuño said.

“As progress has been faster, opposition to gender equality policies has also been more intense and spirited,” she said.

This backlash is partly explained by the perception that these policies are unnecessary, as women have already achieved equality, and partly due to a persistent attitude that inequality between men and women is “part of a sort of natural order of society,” Nuño said.

“Vox talks a lot about gender ideology, but the real gender ideology is theirs, according to which men and women are essentially different and have a different social purpose,” he added.

If the party were to come to power, it could severely impact the lives of Spanish women, Nuño said. “I fear that they will try to implement their sexist ideas and in some areas, such as sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms, there will be a counter-reform of unthinkable proportions,” she said.

Izaskun Gutiérrez Vecilla, a social worker at Asociación Clara Campoamor, a feminist NGO that works to defend women’s rights, said that if Vox were part of the national government, it could mean “going back 40 or 50 years at a time, when crimes of gender violence were a private matter that should have been kept behind closed doors.”

Vox and Abascal are clear about their intentions for the country, leaving Gutierrez in no doubt about what’s at stake on Sunday. Two terms sum up Vox’s policies towards women, she said: “Denial of gender-based violence and destruction of all that the women of this country have achieved over the last few decades.”

While the scale of Vox’s influence in a future government has yet to be decided, the party has already shown what it is capable of, Gutiérrez said. In local administrations where it has gained influence, Vox has managed to crush equality initiatives and censor cultural events, she said.

Activists are deeply concerned about what the party’s success and the outcome of Sunday’s election could mean for Spain’s future.

“We could see that they intend to implement a series of reactionary policies that bring more sexism, more homophobia, more racism in our country, in addition to a very dangerous confrontation in Spanish society,” said Gutiérrez.