Last week's parliamentary election marked a turning point in post-Franco Spanish politics. For the first time since Spain's transition to democracy in the late 1970s, a party clearly situated on the far right of the political spectrum (i.e., Vox) managed to gain a substantial portion of the national vote And although Vox fell short of its own and some analysts' expectations, its impact proved highly significant – albeit not necessarily for the reasons analysts had anticipated.
Pre-election surveys strongly suggested that neither the center-right (Partido Popular and Ciudadanos) nor the center-left (PSOE and UPodemos) would garner enough seats to form a majority government. Under the circumstances, it was expected that Vox would have an important role as "king maker," as had occurred in the wake of the regional election in Andalusia in late 2018.
As it happened, things did not exactly turn out that way. For one, Vox's ascent in the polls provoked an extraordinary left-wing counter-mobilization, which primarily favoured the traditional left, i.e., PSOE. At the same time, VOX's mobilization came to a large extent at the expense of Spain's traditional center-right, i.e., the Partido Popular, which suffered a historical defeat, losing roughly two thirds of its seats in Spain's lower house, the Cortes.
