The far right’s success in last month’s regional elections in Extremadura, Spain, was inevitable. After a series of corruption and sexual harassment allegations surrounding Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist government since the summer, everyone in Spain knew he would never pull off a victory. Although the southwestern region has historically been a stronghold of Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), it has been in the hands of the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party since 2023.
This alliance, which until recently governed several other strategically important regions of Spain, such as Valencia and Murcia, is poised to take over the Spanish government in the next general elections in 2027. Its victory would potentially leave Europe without any socialist government. Denmark’s government under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen – the only other European government still often cited as genuinely socialist in orientation – has increasingly adopted a harsh anti-immigration rhetoric that sits uneasily with socialist principles.
But why is Sanchez heading towards defeat despite making his country the new economic engine of Europe, leading the green transition, and being one of the few leaders denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza? How will his inevitable defeat affect the European Parliament, already under threat from far-right leaders across the continent?
When Sanchez managed to form a coalition in the 2023 general elections, it was far from perfect. Among his allies were Sumar, a coalition of leftist parties, and Junts, a conservative Catalan independence party, both of which repeatedly threatened to withdraw their support if demands were not met. The prime minister managed to hold the fragile coalition together until this fall, when the Catalan party withdrew its support over immigration powers.
Pressured by the rise of a new far-right independent party, Alianca Catalana (Catalan Alliance), Junts demanded the power to deport convicted migrants who re-offend, a demand that proved highly controversial. Although Sumar has not withdrawn its support from the coalition, it has repeatedly accused the socialists of ignoring a series of corruption investigations and harassment allegations involving senior figures in Sanchez’s party.
These include serious corruption accusations against the former Public Works and Transport Minister Jose Luis Abalos, who has been placed in pre-trial detention. He is under investigation for alleged bribery, influence-peddling, and embezzlement in connection with public contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also include sexual misconduct allegations involving Francisco Salazar, who oversaw institutional coordination at the Moncloa Palace, the office and official residence of the prime minister, and against whom the party has failed to take decisive action.
This negligence, together with the former minister’s incarceration, is beginning to erase the achievements of Sanchez’s socialist government, which, among other things, mounted an effective response to the rise of the far right in Spain and abroad. In response to the far-right plan to privatise public institutions and reduce employment, the Spanish prime minister has advanced the welfare state by improving citizens’ material conditions.
His labour market reform has increased the minimum wage and protected pensions by linking them to the cost of living. It shouldn’t be a surprise that The Economist ranked Spain top in its rich-world economic performance rankings. Sanchez has also attracted substantial renewable energy investment, turning Spain into one of Europe’s leading destinations for clean energy projects.
According to Spain’s social security and migration authorities, around 45 percent of all jobs created since 2022 have been filled by foreign-born workers, who now account for roughly 13 percent of the workforce, underscoring the sector’s contribution to labour market expansion.
Unlike most of the European centre left, Sanchez has maintained a traditional socialist stance against the rise in military spending, provoking a furious reaction from many European countries, and especially from United States President Donald Trump. After the Spanish prime minister refused to allocate 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to military spending at a NATO summit, Trump threatened Spain in his usual rough style: “We will make you pay double.”
But the military build-up (apparently the only solution of the European elites to exit the continent’s harsh economic crisis) is not the only front that Sanchez has opened against the Trump administration. He asked, in fact, for more rules about the internet and social media. This is a position strongly opposed by Washington, which recently imposed visa sanctions on a former top European Union official and employees of organisations that fight against disinformation for alleged censorship.
Behind the US move, there is obviously no opposition to the alarming drift towards European censorship, but rather the will to protect the monopolistic American web giants. No other socialist party shared Sanchez’s stance, and most of the right’s forces, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy the most prominent example, are completely subservient to Washington.
The crisis of the European centre left is a crisis that affects the very core of the idea of socialism. Almost all the European socialist parties have undergone a transformation over the last 20 years, a change that has led them towards a substantial liberal politics. Take Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom or Elly Schlein in Italy. They are convinced warmongers regarding Ukraine and are indistinguishable from the liberal parties on economic solutions.
In a late-December Christmas survey conducted by JL Partners for The Independent, UK Labour voters expressed deep dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Starmer’s leadership. By an overwhelming three-to-one margin, respondents said the party would have a better chance of winning the next election if Starmer were replaced. This discontent is symptomatic of a broader crisis facing Europe’s centre left, where even leaders of nominally “socialist” parties are increasingly indistinguishable from their liberal counterparts.
Although Sanchez remains popular among leftist voters, it’s going to be very hard for him to succeed in the upcoming elections in Aragon, Castile and Leon, and Andalusia this spring. The Spanish socialist exception will be remembered as the last attempt to respond to the European left’s crisis as well as the far-right takeover.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
