6 Key Takeaways from Spain’s “Debate of 7”

In my first article from Spain, I set the stage for the country’s upcoming national elections on July 23, focusing on the threat posed by resurgent fascist movements. Now it’s time to dig deeper into the complex political dynamics animating the campaign as well as some of the social forces shaping how the campaign is being waged and covered in the media. 

Over the past week, Spaniards watched the only one-on-one debate between current President Pedro Sánchez of the Socialist party (PSOE) and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP). It was a predictably brutal encounter marked by frequent interruptions, a relentless torrent of lies and attacks from Feijóo, and a complete failure of the moderators to do even a minimal amount of fact-checking. In short, it was exactly the kind of spectacle that viewers of US cable news have been seeing for the better part of two decades - the kind that makes people hate “politics” even as they can’t stop themselves from watching the next segment. 

Last evening, however, there was a different sort of debate hosted by RTVE, the state-funded radio and TV corporation. This one featured seven participants, each a spokesperson for one of the seven main parties contesting the elections. Beyond the PSOE and PP, this included the new leftist coalition Sumar, the far-right Vox, and three regional parties representing Catalan and Basque nationalist interests. 

I watched the entire “Debate of 7,” which lasted just over two hours, and was intrigued by the nature of the discussion that took place. (Click here for video of the full debate in Spanish.) Below are my main takeaways from the debate itself and some of the broader discourse surrounding it. While I won’t be commenting in detail on the regional issues, which continue to be sources of considerable tension within the country, I do want to acknowledge that the presence of the regional parties added a valuable and often critical element to the debate as each of those parties approached national issues from what might be described as a “partial outsider” position. I also want to emphasize that while I have a solid familiarity with current political and social dynamics in Spain, I was viewing the debate from the position of a US citizen who can’t help but interpret the Spanish campaign in relation to my own national context.

1. Vox: a Trumpist cartoon?

Vox spokesperson Iván Espinosa de los Monteros came across as an almost absurd caricature, his presence dominated by a cartoonishly sculpted beard and hairdo and his statements punctuated by ridiculous props that any observer of Republican histrionics in the US House of Representatives would recognize. As his party has put the defense of Spanish patriarchy at the center of its neo-fascist agenda, he would undoubtedly object to my gender-neutral description (“spokesperson”) of his role. 

Vox spokesperson Iván Espinosa de los Monteros has props.

Throughout the debate, “Iván the Terrible” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) may as well have been reading straight from a slightly modified Ron DeSantis speech that he ran through a Bing translator. The term “woke” doesn’t seem to have made its way to Spain quite yet, but all the key elements of the anti-”woke” panic were there: “parental rights,” viciously misleading and hysterical attacks on “gender ideology,” ominous references to “law and order” approaches, etc. Most galling was his jamon-fisted attempt to deflect attention away from gender violence (the existence of which his party literally denies) by claiming that most sexual assaults in the country are committed by immigrants. (When I heard that one, I imagined Stephen Miller rubbing his hands together - or worse - in delight.) 

In short, the Vox that was on display at the “Debate of 7” came across as the kind of political party that might emerge if a group of insecure, underperforming teenage boys got tired of the smart kids (especially the girls) running circles around them and decided to attend a Steve Bannon seminar. By saying so, I don’t mean to undersell the threat of rising fascism in Spain; I just think the core of the threat lies elsewhere. Speaking of which…

2. PP prevarication

As I mentioned in my previous article, the PP are the true inheritors of the country’s fascist tradition. Yet by establishing one of the country’s two largest political parties and holding power periodically over the past three decades, they have remade themselves as “traditional conservatives” not unlike Georgia racists peeling off their hoods and becoming “respectable” Republicans. 

At the debate, PP spokesperson Cuca Gamarra continued with the script that Feijóo had established in his “face to face” debate with Sánchez: relentless attacks almost entirely divorced from any detailed discussion of actual issues. Her central argument was that Sánchez is somehow uniquely guilty of keeping his own reelection in mind when making policy choices, which is sort of like accusing your opponent in a football match of having a gameplan. 

Many of the other participants at the debate were quick to point out the PP’s ongoing alliance with Vox, particularly when it comes to negotiating coalitional arrangements for local and regional governments. All the polls suggest that the PP won’t be able to govern nationally on its own, yet Gamarra kept denying this reality like an alcoholic who insists they’re just a “social drinker.” Not even bothering to present anything resembling a political program, the PP seems to spend most of its energy trying to distract attention from the man behind the curtain. Yet there is something much more serious going on in the PP-Vox alliance. 

3. Two (fascist) peas in a pod

I keep feeling like there is something out of balance in the way the rise of Vox is discussed, especially outside of Spain but also to an extent within the country itself. Vox appears in these political narratives as a specter of an awful future that well-meaning democrats are trying to avoid. Yet that future, in many ways, is already here, and this is a testimony to the relentless work of the right-wing interests that have always bankrolled the PP. Those people are quite happy to use Vox - perhaps they even created them? - for their own purposes, but they are also used by Vox. 

A friend here in Madrid reminded me of a famous remark made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the longtime leader of the National Front (France’s most influential far-right party). Asked to comment on an election that his party clearly would not win, Le Pen calmly said that he didn’t care who won because the NF’s positions were already being adopted by everyone else anyway. In other words, they had succeeded in moving the entire conversation to the right on issues such as immigration, slowly turning fascist positions into mainstream ones. 

Making these kinds of dynamics visible would require more media examination of the actual policy positions linking the PP and Vox. All of the talk about possible governing coalitions - talk that is inevitably driven by a media focus on parties and personalities - serves to obscure the material implications of these alliances. The theatrical element of the debate environment led to “gotcha” questions for the PP: will you pledge not to make a pact with Vox? A more useful and clarifying question would have been: can you explain, specifically, where your party differs from Vox on any significant matters of substance? Insisting on an answer to this question might have helped reveal the extent to which the PP is actively implicated in a real fascist politics. 

4. Keeping the Right out, disciplining the Left

This brings us to the PSOE, whose spokesperson, Patxi López, did a somewhat better job of dealing with the PP’s attacks than Sánchez did in the previous debate. The PSOE’s dilemma, which it tries to leverage as an electoral strength, is that it is heavily invested in neoliberal structures even as it tries to tinker around the edges of those structures in order to appeal to particular voting blocs. 

For his part, López framed this as a mission of “progress” - moving the country forward, securing and defending social rights, etc. - as well as a necessity for keeping the far right out of power. Yet one can also view this approach as equally designed to put the brakes on any sort of Left movement that might recapture the horizontal, radically democratic spirit of the anti-austerity indignados movement (known here as the “15-M” movement as it began on March 15, 2011).

These PSOE-Left tensions appear all over the place, much like the tensions in the US between the Democratic Party and its restless Left critics. But the most visceral issue in Spain right now appears to be the housing issue, with rampant real estate speculation leaving ordinary Spaniards paying huge chunks of their income for apartment rentals while thousands of housing units remain off the market. 

“The dwelling for those who reside in it. Rentiers out!” Sticker photographed in Madrid, July 2023. 

As a neoliberal party, the PSOE appears to have a very limited appetite for taking on the capitalist interests that lie behind the entire problem. This leaves the ground open for the demagogues of the PP and Vox to stoke fears of anarchist okupas coming to take over people’s real estate holdings. Meanwhile, the Left continues to hone its vision of a society where housing is a human right. The PSOE’s response to this is to use the threat of Vox to discipline the Left, essentially saying, “don’t push too hard on the housing issue or we’ll end up with a fascist government.” 

5. Sumar’s breath of fresh air

I was particularly interested in how Sumar, the new leftist coalition formed in part through a purge of key members of Podemos, would present itself at the debate. Its representative was Aina Vidal, whose background is in environmental activism in Catalonia. Her interventions in the debate were particularly sharp and focused. It was immediately evident that she would try to keep the focus on bread and butter issues and also on appealing to the younger generation of Spaniards. 

Throughout the debate, more than all the other presenters, Vidal made a point of naming specific policy proposals from Sumar’s electoral platform. Some of these proposals, such as the idea of giving subsidies to young people to support higher education, training, and entrepreneurship,have received more public attention than others. 

Sumar spokesperson Aina Vidal left the props at home but brought the hope.

There is undoubtedly some weariness on the part of voters who have spent years hearing Left parties promise X, Y, and Z but never deliver on those promises, whether because of the Left’s chronic fragmentation or because of the dominance of the neoliberal parties. At the same time, one has to acknowledge that the work of defining a clear horizon of social transformation - like guaranteed housing for all - is important ideological work. I was inspired by Vidal’s directness as well as her hopeful closing statement, which spoke to the need for solidarity and commitment to collective purpose in the struggle for justice. 

6. Climate context

Finally, I was struck by the fact that the debate format - which divided the discussion into four 30-minute thematic blocs - did not explicitly identify climate crisis as a central issue. But it did come up periodically in the context of other topics. 

It was hardly surprising that the PP and Vox representatives had nothing to offer as their platforms essentially amount to “burn baby, burn!” The urgency of the climate crisis was only visible thanks to the efforts of Vidal and, to a lesser extent, the PSOE’s López, both of whom insisted on naming it and, in Vidal’s case, linking it explicitly with issues of social justice. 

Two visions of the debate

From a US perspective, the debate provided some disturbing echoes of the entire dynamic surrounding Trump and Trumpism. These echoes include not only Vox’s incendiary, ignorant rhetoric and policy positions, but also the role of the news media in adding oxygen to the fire of rising fascism. As the US learned in the 2016 presidential campaign and in the years since then, media outlets are quite happy to give endless airtime to far-right candidates, parties, movements, and the debates surrounding them - anything that draws eyeballs to the screen. 

Spain is now getting a heavy dose of what is now the classic Trump media loop: the fascists say something outrageous, others react, coverage increases, people remain interested and obsessed because of the increased coverage, and then media outlets justify extending the coverage because of the interest they have helped to create in the first place. Just in the past week here, an offensive slogan being used by far-right politicians and chanted in the streets by their supporters became the subject of breathless news coverage that only served to keep the slogan at the front of people’s minds in a way that George Lakoff (author of Don’t Think of an Elephant) would recognize immediately. 

At the same time, while my Spanish interlocutors have good reason to be cynical of how politics is conducted and discussed here, I do find it refreshing to witness a political debate that at least provides space for more openly ideological discussions. Imagine a presidential debate in the United States in which issues such as fascism or neoliberalism can be openly named and critiqued, or where candidates and party spokespersons can have a frank discussion about redistribution of the country’s wealth. It’s unthinkable! 

Now if we can just get the media moderators to press the fascists and the neoliberals to respond to the substance of those critiques instead of letting them off the hook with their prepared talking points…