Spain’s ‘Ohio’ points to victory for the right

ZARAGOZA, Spain — If there’s a place that represents “Middle Spain” then it has to be Aragón.

The northeastern region runs from the Pyrenean border with France down to the plains of the Monegros Desert and the badlands of Teruel. Around half of its 1.3 million population live in the regional capital, Zaragoza, which sits equidistant between Madrid and Barcelona.

A geographical and demographic microcosm of the country, its knack for reflecting national electoral movements has given it the nickname “Spain’s Ohio.”

A 2015 book that examined this phenomenon noted that “like Ohio, Aragón has been an excellent political thermometer of our country during our short democratic history,” adding that it is “Spain’s swing region.”

In every general election since the return to democracy in 1977, the winning party in Aragón has been the overall victor. If that trend continues, the conservative Popular Party (PP) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which now controls Aragón’s main cities and its regional government following local elections in May, appears to be heading for victory in the July 23 general election, ahead of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

“Whoever wins in Aragón wins in the general election, which tells us that Feijóo will become prime minister,” said Pedro Navarro, the PP’s lead candidate for Congress for Zaragoza province.

“The PP wins in general elections when we have won the city halls,” he said. “If we win control of the big Spanish cities — right now we govern 30 out of 50 provincial capitals — the PP wins the general election.”

The shift in the balance of power in Aragón has also benefitted the far-right Vox. The right now has more councilors in Zaragoza city hall — 19 out of 31 — than at any time since the return to democracy.

The PP made similar gains across much of Spain in regional elections in May and most polls leading up to this election have consistently shown the conservatives to be leading the PSOE.

“[Sánchez] has lurched to the left and abandoned moderation and the centrist vote,” said Navarro.

Separatist parties

Much of the PP’s campaign has focused on attacking Sánchez’s parliamentary reliance on the Basque and Catalan separatist parties, EH Bildu and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) — and it seems to have worked.

José María Bescos has voted for both the PSOE and the conservatives, as well as for Aragonese regional parties, in the past. A retired civil servant who lives in Zaragoza, he intends to vote for the PP this time, because of Sánchez’s engagement with nationalists.

“You can’t mortgage the state to favor parties which have voted against the constitution,” Bescos said. “It’s an attack on our co-existence.”

The Spanish economy is among the fastest growers in the EU, the jobless rate is falling and inflation has dropped below 2 percent, but for Bescos territorial unity and keeping pro-independence forces away from government is more important.

“For me this issue is absolutely fundamental,” he said.

Danitza García, originally from Bolivia and who owns a bakery in Zaragoza, is undecided between the PP and Vox. She points to her own diminished spending power after more than a year of high inflation and identifies with Vox’s hard line on immigration.

“I’m Latin American and I know Vox is against immigrants, but if someone comes from abroad they have to follow the rules like everyone else,” she said. “There are people who live off state hand-outs and I don’t like that. Vox could be a good alternative.”

But while Aragón is expected once again to play the Ohio role in this election, there could be a twist: for the first time in Spain’s modern history, it is possible that the winning party might not end up forming a government. Securing a parliamentary majority looks difficult for both left and right.

“This time round, [Aragón] is likely to be a good reflection of the winner, but it won’t necessarily be able to tell us who is going to end up governing,” said José Pablo Ferrándiz, head of public opinion in Spain for polling firm Ipsos.

That is why the performance of the allies of the main two parties — the far right and the new leftist platform Sumar — will be closely watched.

“The battle between Sumar and Vox for third place could be key,” said Ferrándiz, pointing to Spain’s electoral system, which leaves the fourth-placed party empty-handed in many smaller and medium-sized provinces, such as Huesca and Teruel, in Aragón.

‘The fragmented left’

Jorge Pueyo is the lead candidate in Zaragoza for the Aragonese Union (CHA), one of 15 leftist parties around the country which have united under the Sumar banner.

“Sumar has the opportunity to be part of the government — to fight to be a powerful, third political force in Spain — ahead of Vox,” he said, speaking in his party’s headquarters in the Aragonese capital.

Pueyo insists that the theory of a pronounced swing to the right in his region and nationwide, as suggested by May’s local elections, is misplaced. Instead, he believes the collapse of the self-declared liberals of Ciudadanos and a lack of unity on the left were the real causes of that result.

“The growth of the right is not that pronounced,” he said. “The PP has co-opted the Ciudadanos vote and Vox has grown a bit because of that, too. But this hasn’t been an extreme sociological change, it’s more about the fragmented left.”

Sumar, which is led by Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz, solves that problem of disunity and the electoral system favors larger tickets. Unidas Podemos, the junior partner in Sánchez’s coalition government, is among those absorbed into the new brand.

But ahead of the general election, Aragón’s left is already pointing to the region as a warning flag to voters.

In one of dozens of deals the PP has cut with Vox across Spain in the wake of the local elections, the far-right party’s Marta Fernández was made speaker of the Aragón parliament. A declared admirer of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Fernández has expressed views that include denying climate change and violence against women, as well as making sexist jokes about feminists.

The PP is hoping to govern in Aragón without entering a formal coalition with Vox. However, elsewhere in Spain, the withdrawal of the LGBTQ+ flag from some town halls governed by the right and the cancellation in a town in Cantabria of the showing of the Disney film “Lightyear” — apparently because it included a scene in which two women kissed — have been attributed to Vox’s presence alongside the conservatives.

Pueyo warned such policies would be replicated nationwide by a possible PP-Vox central government.

“It would mean the loss of rights for women, for migrants, for anyone who doesn’t fit into [that idea of] Spain,” he said. “It would send Spain back 40 years.”