Hard line on immigration adopted by People’s party as right seeks to overthrow socialist government in 2027
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Spain’s opposition conservatives are rekindling their regional pacts with the far-right Vox party by adopting the latter’s hard line on immigration. It comes less than two years after disagreements over the issue led to the collapse of coalition administrations in five of the country’s self-governing regions.
The renewal of the regional deals between the People’s party (PP) and Vox comes prior to next year’s general election and as Spain’s socialist government seeks to extol the benefits of immigration by regularising the status of at least 500,000 undocumented migrants.
The PP, which six years ago repudiated its far-right rival as a party that practised a politics based on “fear, anger, resentment and revenge”, subsequently entered into regional coalitions with Vox in Valencia, Aragón, Murcia, Extremadura, and Castilla y León. Those alliances ended in July 2024 when Vox abandoned all five coalitions after the PP opted to support the central government’s plans to bring about 400 unaccompanied foreign children from the Canary Islands and find them homes around the mainland.
