It was always on the cards. With youth unemployment still in excess of 30 per cent, Catalonia in turmoil and the focus of Muslim immigration shifting from Italy and Greece to the touristic hot spot Costa del Sol, Spain was bound to feel the pull of populism. And the doomsayers have, so far, not been proved wrong.
The campaign leading up to next month’s general election is proving to be the most hotly-contested since the restoration of Spanish democracy in 1975.
Political norms established in the ’80s and ’90s no longer apply. The centre has fractured and spun out in all directions.
The centre-right People’s Party, led for many years by former prime minister Mariano Rajoy, remains in recovery in the wake of a series of corruption scandals that forced it to retire in 2017. Its successor, the centre-left Socialist Party, which had moved to fill the gap, has itself been obliged to go to the country after the defeat of its spring budget orchestrated in part by Catalan separatists.
