Vox, an anti-immigrant, anti-feminist party, wins seats in Andalusia

MANY SPANIARDS once assumed that their country was immune to the right-wing populism that has swept across Europe. The dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which ended in 1975, inoculated them, they thought. When voters were angry, they backed populists of the left, such as Podemos, a Leninist-Peronist outfit. Yet that immunity, if it ever existed, is over. At a regional election in Andalusia on December 2nd Vox, a newish populist party of the right, won 11% of the vote. Spaniards are shocked.

Founded in 2013, Vox opposes immigration and feminism, and is Eurosceptic. It wants to abolish regional governments and parliaments (including the one in Andalusia in which it now has 12 out of 109 seats) and make Spain a centralised unitary state, as it was under Franco. Its success, which was hailed by Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally, means the far right is represented in a Spanish parliament for the first time since 1982.