With a visit to Brazil, Spanish direita leva sua batalha para a la América Latina | International

The battle for the hegemony of Spanish law is also at odds with the borders of the European country. The conservative Popular Party (PP), the main opposition to the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez, and the ultradirect Vox, will open a dispute over the European point of reference for this ideology of Latin America, a continent that is subject to an accelerated process of political polarization, not just the parties Moderates are being swayed by the rise of populist candidates.

The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, embarked as a surprise for Brazil on the sixth fair to participate in Várzea Grande (MT) do Deep Brazil Congress, from the Conservative-Liberal Institute created by federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP), who was also present at the event. The presence of Abascal would be a way to counter the current journey through the region of the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado.

In Europe, the leader of Vox explores alliances with ultraconservative parties, while the PP tries to promote the center-direct bloc after losing influence with the departure of Angela Merkel from the German chancellor. The foreign policy of Casado and Abascal reveals an ideological fissure between the two formations, which are not in the meantime likely to be understood if the conservatives will mostly join in the next general elections, with Vox’s anti-European tendency as the main point of clash.

So that people do not doubt that the trip from Abascal to Brazil has the objective of puxar or Casado’s tapestry, the statement from Vox on the matter included declarations of its leader accusing the chef of the PP of wanting to “come to agreements, form a government in Spain with the members of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group, with whom we sit at the table of terrorists and drug traffickers”. He was referring, with this poisonous phrase, to Casado’s affirmation that he would be willing to form a coalition government with the Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores da Espanha (PSOE), since he was the figure of the current Socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, case wins the next elections. The São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group are meeting places for the Latin American and Spanish left. Or first refers to parties, while or second, to personalities. They participate from forças sociais-democratas até communists, and figures such as the ex-premiê espanhol José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and ex-president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

O Vox paints these two entities with monstrous inks and establishes an anti-communist alliance to stop the supposed advance of leftist totalitarianism in the continent. Its banner is the Letter from Madrid, a manifesto in defense of liberal democracy, which could be assassinated by the PP if it had not been sponsored by rival Vox. It was backed by 150 international leaders and more than 10,000 people.

At the same time, Casado launched his own initiative in similar terms, to Aliança pela Liberdade na Iberoamérica, to defend “democracy, or the rule of law, a market economy, or the State of being safe and secure.” Abascal invited or PP to assassinate a letter, more popular rejeitaram or invitation. “The PP has decades of history in Ibero-America, we are not recem-chegados, and its own initiatives, which it seriously and formally presents to the presidents”, countered Pablo Hispán, deputy spokesperson for Foreign Relations of the PP in Congress, that accompanies Casado on his Latin-American tour.

The leader of the PP seeks in Latin America an international projection against Vox. In Argentina, the first stage of his journey, Casado met with the moderate sectors of the opposition, such as former president Mauricio Macri and the prefect of Buenos Aires, Horacio Larreta, and later met with the presidents of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, of Uruguay , Luis Lacalle Pou, and from Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez. Married excluded from his trip to Brazil by Bolsonaro, from which he fez questão to show distance in an interview year Argentine newspaper The nation. “I believe that our political alliance for Brazil is a more moderate alliance,” she said. On December 1, the leader of the PP spoke out against populism in a conversation with the award-winning journalist Anne Applebaum: “A vacina against populism is not disguising itself as populist”, he said.

Casado also seeks to give impetus to the center-direct parties of the region, but, regardless of general reflections, he spends a long time confronting the populisms of the extreme right in Latin America. Not Chile, he avoided ruling on the second round between the extreme director José Antonio Kast and the leftist Gabriel Boric. His assessor Pablo Hispán defends that the leader of the PP does not want to commit “interference in internal questions”. Kast is a clear ally of Abascal, who extends his network of influence in the region to the Argentinean anarcho-liberal economist Javier Milei, who obtained 17% two votes in Buenos Aires in the legislative elections last month, and the Peruvian Keiko Fujimori, a former filha -Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who lost the presidential election to leftist Pedro Castillo. I joined former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana, president of the Central Democrat International (IDC), who had Casado as vice-president, participated in events organized by Vox, to the surprise and annoyance of the PP.

The popular leader also made clear his distance as Vox in his passage through Santiago, citing examples of his different views about the attributions of two Spanish regional governments and the European project, but admitted that Abascal’s formation did not “cross the line” as , I don’t understand, fizeram “other parties of populist direita”.

The problem for the PP is that the Republican Party of the United States, with Donald Trump, and Brazil with Bolsonaro will turn to positions of extreme directness. The great ideological clash of 2022 will be the Brazilian presidential elections in October, where the democratic right shows little power. Meanwhile, the popular ones defend that the impetus of populist leadership in Latin America is “absolutely marginal”, according to Hispanic, since “they are only the Government of Brazil”. Something similar, he argues, occurs in Europe, or another battlefield of alliances between PP and Vox. “The European PP is the first force in the European Parliament, the presidency of the European Commission and its two founding parties, as we see that there are anti-European forces that are marginalized. Poland and Hungary are the only countries that they govern. Their policies are not going to determine the future of the União”, says Hispán.

But after Merkel’s departure from the German chancelaria, now occupied by the social-democratic Olaf Scholz, she reduced the influence of two traditional European conservatives, who are in opposition in the main EU countries. The main conservative government is the Greek of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who Casado transformed into his European reference precisely because of the lack of relevant prime ministers in his political family. “The Spanish PP is one of the two most important after Merkel’s departure, because in Italy and in France they are low, and in Spain they are less so or the main opposition party. Merkel’s Europe has great prestige in Spain; It is a card that Casado wanted to play, as Abascal chose the Eurocetic direita”, analyzes Ignacio Molina, professor of Political Sciences at the Autonomous University of Madrid and researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute.

Vox tem endowed with more identity positions against a greater European integration. In January, Abascal will gather in Spain a “cupula of European patriots”, as the ultra-conservative prime ministers of Poland and Hungary, who will open a crisis in the EU for their authoritarian and homophobic policies and their challenge to the primacy of community law over or national. It didn’t come on December, but the group met in Warsaw, with the participation of the French radical Marine Le Pen. “In the international questão, there is still a clear fracture between the PP and Vox, which may cause problems for Casado no futuro”, says Molina. “O Vox is positioning itself against advancing in something as important for Spain as European integration”.

Carme Colomina, a researcher at the Center for International Relations of Barcelona (CIDOB), perceives “a dispute over spaces, but these spaces are increasingly confused. The lines between the traditional direitas and the radical ones are more and more diffuse. In Europe, the political agenda and the arguments are copied”, she defends. O próprio Casado deu sinais dessas contradições in a trip he did not come to Cyprus in December, where he proposed that the States go through their Armed Forces to ensure their territorial integrity before migratory pressure. On purpose, he fully embarked on the offensive against immigration, and it had been formulated by Vox.