Spain goes to the polls to decide its next government on Sunday, and a hard-right coalition is looking likely.

The most likely government to emerge - most analysts predict - will be a coalition including a hard-right nationalist party for the first time in Spain since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

More left-leaning Spaniards are frantically texting contacts, urging them to make sure to vote - despite the heat and it being holiday time for many - to “stop the fascists” in their tracks.The rhetoric this election season has been toxic, with voters becoming increasingly polarised.

It’s a fight over values, traditions and about what being Spanish should mean in 2023.

This kind of heated identity debate isn’t peculiar to Spain. Think of Italy, France, Brazil or the post-Trumpian debate in the US.

At EU HQ in Brussels, there are huge concerns about a resurgence of hard-right nationalist parties across Europe.

  • SpaniardEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    In my previous work there was this client with an African wife, a doctor, she obviously had the title but she couldn’t work in Spain without validating her title but doing some exams in Spanish, they were working on that.

    I will bring my girlfriend from her country here and I told her she will need to do that in order to validate her academic titles. It’s a shame that someone that was top of her class won’t be able to use those academic results here.

    It has nothing to do with discrimination, it’s about maintaining educational standards.