In a moment of feeble creativity, VOX, the new referent for the extreme right in Spain, thought of promoting a new image of political leadership by reproducing a scene that seems as though it was taken out from the Lord of the Rings epic saga. Picture this: Santiago Abascal mounting a horse across the desert plains of the Castillian territory with Howard Shore’s music resonating in the background.
It is almost too easy to make fun of the video in which VOX promises to ‘Reconquer Spain’. For the organization, this discourse draws on the Spanish Middle Ages, specifically the battle to expel Arab communities residing in the Iberian peninsula from the 8th century onwards culminating in the conquest of Granada, which also led to expulsion of Jews from Spain.
However, despite appealing to such a dark moment in the country’s history, on December 2, 2018, Abascal’s party burst into Andalusia’s parliamentary regional elections with 10,97% of votes and twelve seats. This is a great electoral leap for VOX if we take into account that in 2015 the party only obtained 0.45% of the vote and not a single seat in the regional parliament.
