Spain closed out 2018 by witnessing the rise of a new and growing populist party named Vox, writes Ángel Manuel García Carmona in a new essay for Acton’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website:
Since 2016, right-wing populist parties have been on the rise in Europe: National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France, the League in Italy, the Party for Freedom in Netherlands, Vlaams Belang in Flanders, and the Alternative for Germany are but a few examples. Yet the Iberian Peninsula – Spain and Portugal – has been an exception. It was said that countries such as my native Spain resisted the so-called “Alt-Right trend.” However, 2018 ended with a revolution in national and regional politics as a collectivist, populist party began its rise.
He then analyzes the party’s political platform in detail, focusing on planks related to economics, social policy, international affairs, immigration, and the freedom of NGOs.
In a rebuke to populist parties that seek to use state coercion for putatively conservative aims, Carmona writes:
Upholding human dignity, preserving Western civilization, and promoting the flourishing of natural families does not require nationalism to vanquish globalism. Governments are the worst enemies of family and tradition. The best path forward promotes subsidiarity that combines free markets and spontaneous order.
(Photo credit: Vox party leader Santiago Abascal gives a presentation in A Coruña. Contando Estrelas. CC BY-SA 2.0.)
