Afilonius Rex, Bilbo, 22nd January 2025.

“They are so blind that they prefer to harm millions of Spaniards in order to erode the government. Feijóo is willing to go blind in order to make Sánchez one-eyed.” These were the recent words of Oscar Puente, Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility of the Government of Spain, referring to the extreme rightwing opposition in Spain, led by the Galician Nuñez Feijoo, and consisting of the Popular Party, the ultra-right Vox, and JUNTS, the extreme rightwing catalán nationalist party.

We are quite possibly on the brink of seeing the downfall of the progressive government in Spain and the resulting return to the ballot boxes to decide Spain’s future strategies, policies, and directions. It’s as if the inauguration of Trump and the attendant signals of worrying authoritarian and totalitarian tics have emboldened the worst elements of the Spanish right; political parties, pressure groups and the massively partisan extreme rightwing media are playing their reactionary, populist and degenerate cards to the max.

But this should come as no surprise. People like the ERC’s Gabriel Rufían have been warning about this reactionary, populist and profoundly disturbing rightwing block for quite some time now. Speaking recently in the Spanish parliament, Rufian had this to say of JUNTS: “‘It is the most reactionary rightwing that hides its miseries behind an Estelada (Catalan flag).”

Arés Tubau, deputy secretary general of ERC, also had this to say: ‘The day you see how Junts make Feijoo president of the government and the PP governing together with VOX, they will come to you with the story that the Catalans needed something or that the rest of us have done a terrible job. But the truth is that they feel comfortable thinking, acting and voting like them;’ Together with the other fascists, Nazis and nostalgics.

Let’s be very clear about this, the Catalan ultranationalists and xenophobes of JUNTS are the direct inheritors of those Catalans who not only fully collaborated with the repressive, brutal and bloody Fascist regime of Franco but made their fortunes in doing so. And they are still as trustworthy as Vichy France in its day.

I will leave you with these words, also from Oscar Puente: “It is not at all clear, no matter how hard they try, that the PP will become the Spanish government in the next seven years (my bet is that they will not succeed). What is clear is that whether or not they get there, it will have taken away the image of justice, the loyalty between institutions, and the democratic normality of our country. It is a very high price to pay for not having the certainty of achieving the objective they are pursuing.”

In short, the PP is throwing away what little semblance of decency, honour and integrity it once had by attempting to get into power on the backs of people who are nostalgic for the days of Franco, of regional nationalist and crude capitalist degenerates, and, the supine ignorance of dirt poor fascists and Nazis.

Suppose the left, progressive and moderate centrists can’t get their act together. In that case, extreme rightwing would enter into the national government of Spain, which would be highly negative for the people of Spain, the economy of Spain, and the cohesion and progress of a decent, just, and egalitarian Europe.