Spain : Rising Right-Wing Populism

Abstract

The chapter discusses the political context in Spain during the 2019 EP elections and introduces the country’s political communication environment. Particular attention is given to the role of Twitter in Spanish political communication and populism in the party field during the twenty-first century. The empirical Twitter analysis focuses on 7786 tweets sent from 203 Twitter accounts by various political actors during a month period in May 2019. In 2019, local and regional elections overlapped with the EP elections, which strongly focused the attention on internal issues. Only the left-leaning PSOE party showed a stronger European conviction in its number of tweets, while the conservative PP focused on local and regional campaigns. However, employment and young people were among the less important themes, even if youth unemployment is among the highest in the EU. The three conservative parties, particularly Ciudadanos and PP, ranked higher in mentions of their political rivals, which shows signs of confrontation between the political parties mainly focused on national politics. The Spanish political system shows a clear example of fringe populism represented by the radical-right Vox. However, the stage of competing populism has not been reached Spain, as the emergence of Vox has coincided with the populist left Podemos party’s institutionalisation.