Authoritarian Legacy and Support for the Modern Day Far-Right in Spain

• In Event: Far-Right Political Parties

Abstract

Vox – the relatively new far-right party – has seen great success in both regional and national elections across Spain since its establishment in 2013. In this paper I ask to what extent support for the Spanish far-right is linked to the country’s legacy of authoritarianism by comparing vote shares for Vox and attitudes towards Franco’s dictatorship across all 19 regional parliaments. First I consider the broader historical context and conduct a qualitative analysis of the different legacies of Francoist Spain across regions. Second, I analyze a dataset from 2000 that asks respondents to assess and reflect on their memories and attitudes towards Franco’s regime. Third, I then compare these results with recent data (2023) to draw out the similarities and differences between predictors for sympathetic views towards Spain’s authoritarian past and current-day support for the far-right. In contrast, regions that are less sympathetic towards Franco’s legacy are more likely to vote for leftist parties. I find that several indicators – in particular, generation, class, and gender – are strong common predictors of support.

Author

• Sally Bonsall, University of Nebraska Omaha