Pro-Europeans everywhere can rest easy with the result of the legislative elections in Spain. National-populist discourse of the far right, and those on the centre-right who believed radicalisation was key to winning, came out battered in Sunday’s elections.
The winners; a social democratic party that only a few years back appeared to fall into the oblivion of political irrelevance. A situation of “pasokization”, a reference to the disappearance of the Socialist Party of Greece (PASOK), which seemed plausible only a couple of years ago, has been averted, situating the PSOE in a comfortable 28,68%, more than 12 points on top of the Popular Party.
Socialist parties in Italy and France have almost entirely dissapeared, and in the UK, Brexit has forced the Labour Party into a state of calamity. The socialist victory in Spain, the 5th largest economy of Europe, sends a strong signal that centre-left parties are able to face the wave of ultra-right movements that threaten democracy and the foundations of the European project.
