Voters go to the polls in Spain today to decide whether to give Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez a new term or, as polls predict, bring the right to power and the far right with it.

As the 2024 European elections approach, if the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy also takes a turn to the right, following Italy’s last year, the European centre-left and left will suffer a heavy blow.

Which will make even more symbolic the fact that Spain currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

Almost all opinion polls released as of Monday showed a virtually certain victory for the People’s Party (PP, right) of Alberto Núñez Feijo, 61. But the publication of polls being banned for five days before the polls opened means surprises are not out of the question.

With a large number of voters undecided at the start of the week (about one in five) and the impact of the election date – in the middle of summer, in the middle of a holiday and with temperatures in the red – on turnout, it also remains to be seen.

Due to the holidays, almost two and a half million citizens out of a total of approximately 37.5 million registered voters voted by mail, the Spanish post office announced on Saturday. This is an unprecedented number.

Polling stations open at 09:00 (local time; 10:00 Greek time) and will close at 20:00 (21:00). In the absence of exit polls, the early results will have to be awaited to see the trend.

Alliance

It would be “a huge surprise if the PP did not emerge as the winner, but whether it will be able to form a government is another matter,” political scientist Pedro Riera Sagrera, a professor at Carlos III University (Madrid), told AFP.

Mr. Feijo has set the goal of his party reaching the magic number of 176 members of Parliament, which will give it an absolute majority (the total number of seats is 350). But only one poll predicted that the right-wing party would have such a performance.

He will therefore need to form an alliance. And its only potential partner is Vox, a far-right, ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative party that was born in 2013, when part of its members split from the PP.

That will be a challenge for Mr Feijo, who projects an image as a moderate and whose campaign has been complicated by the People’s Party’s haggling with Vox over the formation of local governments in areas won by the Socialists in local and regional elections on May 28. As the far-right party did not compromise on its priorities, such as rejecting the concept of gender-based violence, rejecting transgender people, denying climate change.

The leader of Vox, Santiago Avascal, has warned the PP that the price of its support will be his faction’s participation in the government.

If this scenario comes true, it will be the first time the far right has come to power in Spain almost half a century after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.

“It wouldn’t be ideal”

Until the end, Mr. Feijo remained vague about his intentions toward Vox. “Two days before the elections, no candidate should have declared who they will ally with,” he said in an interview with El Mundo newspaper on Wednesday. He added, however, that the scenario of the coalition government with Vox “would not be ideal”.

With him reportedly heading for another heavy defeat after local and regional elections that forced him to call early parliamentary elections, Mr Sanchez, 55, has made the risk of Vox being in government his main campaign argument.

Denouncing the “couple formed by the extreme right and the extreme right”, the socialist politician, who has placed particular emphasis on European integration, stressed during the televised debate on Wednesday that if the PP/Vox alliance takes over the government of Spain it will be a “setback not only for Spain” in terms of rights, but also “a serious defeat for the European project”.

According to him, the only alternative is to keep in power the alliance formed in 2020 between the socialist party (PSOE) and the radical left, which Podemos no longer represents.

Mr. Sanchez’s uneasy partner for the past three years, Podemos, was absorbed and replaced this year by Sumar, a faction led by the outgoing labor minister, the communist and highly pragmatic Yolanda Diath.

However, Mr. Riera Sagrera estimates that the chances of the center-left-left alliance remaining in power are slim.

On the contrary, he considers it possible that no party will secure a majority of seats in the Spanish parliament and that new elections will be needed in a few months, which he considers a “serious risk”.