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A xenophobic party in Spain?

Daniel Morillas Carpio European Democratic Culture

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Topic
In spite of the current tensions, and unlike other European countries, it is
slightly probable and successful that there turns out to be in Spain a party that
does of the xenophobia, the racism or the restriction of the immigration his
principal message.
Resume
Spain has reached in a few years a percentage of foreign population, 9 %,
similarly to that of many European countries of ancient immigration in which
xenophobic parties have arisen. The concentration of the immigrant population
in certain neighborhoods and the delinquency led by some foreigners, they
provoke social tensions that small groups of right-wing try to canalize.
Nevertheless, the weakness of the Spanish nationalism party and the rejection
to the pro-Franco signs that these parties exhibit, make very improbable that
are successful.
Analysis
In the majority of the European countries with high percentages of immigration
they have turned out to be current of public xenophobic opinion which have fed
the formation of political parties with a message against inmigration. These
parties have had unequal successes. In some cases they have turned into
important and stable political forces, as the National French Front, in others
they have achieved momentary successes, as the Ready Pym Fortuyn of
Holland, and in others they have remained to half a way between the
marginality and the institutional presence, without obtaining parliamentary
weight, as the National Party of the United Kingdom. The appearance and the
success or failure of these parties depends on a great number of factors and
many of them are imponderable. A high level of immigrant population, a strong
nationalism from the autochthonous population, unemployment from the
autochthonous ones, difficulties of the Welfare State to attend to the immigrants
without diminishing the quality or quantity of his services, imputable increases of
the delinquency to the immigrants all of them are elements that favor the
appearance of the xenophobic parties
Anothers importance of determining are purely political and institutional: a
xenophobic party will not turn out to be or start to have success if anyone of the
principal parties assumes already a speech xenophobic and offers in favour of
reducing or to impede the immigration. The electoral procedure have also a
notable influence: the most proportional systems facilitate the arrival to the
Parliament of the new parties, habitually small in his origin, whereas the
majority systems, as the Britisher, impede it.
On the other hand, given the complexity and the variety of aspects to which
response must give a political party to obtain electoral support, the
monothematic parties as those who are defined basically like xenophobic, are
condemned to take only momentary successes, since it happened with the
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Ready Pym Fortuyn or the Austrian Liberal party directed by Jrg Haider, or to
remain always in minority in the political life, as the National Front Frenchman
headed by Jean Marie Le Pen. But his political effect goes beyond his electoral
results: the appearance of these groups has an effect on the traditional majority
parties that can turn tempted to gather some of his recoveries for dread of
losing possible voters in his favor, specially if they are capable of mobilizing his
followers and a presence to be gained in the street and in the mass media.
Table 1. Percentage of vote obtained by parties anti-immigration in
parliamentary choices: proved more high places of his electoral history

Lista Pym Fortuyn
(Netherlands)
17% (2002)
Austrian Liberal party 27% (1999)
Flemish Belgian Block 12% (24% in Flandes) (2003)
Danish Peoples party 13% (2005)
Norwegian Progress
party
15% (2001)
National French Front 11% (2002) (20% en la 2 vuelta de las elecc.
presidenciales del 2002)
National British Party 4% (2005)
Fuente: own elaboration.


In Spain there does not exist from the present any party of national area of this
type with electoral possibilities and there are many reasons to trust that a party
like that is not going to appear soon. First, the surveys show that Spain
continues being one of the least xenophobic countries of Europe and even of
the world, though this difference was major a few years ago, when the
immigration in Spain was much more limited. Secondly, the xenophobic speech
is in the habit of being associated with the nationalistic thought and this one is in
Spain very devaluated by the pro-Franco experience, in such a way that a party
that was supporting the defense of the Spanish nation to argue against the
foreign "invasion" would have a very small echo. The situation is different in
case of the own nationalisms of Autonomous Communities, as the catalanism.
Catalonia is the only region in Spain in which there have taken place public
declarations of political leaders of very much weight defining the current
immigration as a threat to the national identity. This one is the only Autonomous
Spanish Community that combines a strong own nationalism with an
immigrants' high presence, since neither the Basque Country or Galicia have a
high immigration, and many of the immigrants that it receives Galicia are
Galicians of origin, returned from Latin America. In the set of Spain, the surveys
and the qualitative studies of opinion show that a dread of the population does
not exist to that his form of life or his "culture" could be modified by the
presence of foreign people. Thirdly, the electoral Spanish system penalizes to
the small parties, for what to any new party it turns out to him difficult to obtain
presence in the state institutions. All that allows to support the optimism to the
scanty possibilities, nowadays, from which a xenophobic party manages to
come to the Parliament in Spain and to turn this way into a political relevant
force.
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Nevertheless, there are reasons for the concerns in the local level. To
understand this it is necessary to depart from the verification that the
immigration does not distribute of homogeneous form in the territory: Most of
the national Spanish territory has very low indexes of immigration, whereas the
immigrants are concentrate in Madrid and the provinces of the Mediterranean
coast, Balearics and Canaries. Even inside these areas, the immigrants
concentrate in certain municipalities, and inside the cities, in certain
neighborhoods, up to managing to represent in some cases more than one third
of the total population, or more than the half if we refer only to the population in
young ages. That is to say, the immigration in Spain is, for the present, a very
concentrated phenomenon. This one is not a peculiar characteristic of the
Spanish case, since all the countries of immigration have very unequal
distributions in his territories, but the fact that in Spain the immigration is so
recent, it strengthens this concentration, because most of the immigrants tends
to reside in the first moments in zones where other people from the same
countries are already.
In these areas where the immigrants concentrate, important tensions take place
in the conviviality between these and autochthonous people, problems like the
different habits in the use of the housing, of the common zones and of the
public spaces, or from some customs that create sometimes inconveniences to
the neighbors, listening to music to a high volume, or consuming alcohol in high
doses during the weekends. In some zones, specially in the centers of the cities
- as Lavapis in Madrid, The Raval in Barcelona, or some areas of Alicante -
the autochthonous ones impute in addition to the foreigners an important rise in
the levels of delinquency. To this it is necessary to add the appearance of a
competition between immigrant and autochthonous for the access to public
services that are facilitated from scales that occupy first place to the minor's
families it rents, as the public day-care centers, a competition in which the
immigrants win often.
All that believes in the areas of immigrants' high concentration a social climate
of dissatisfaction and rejection to the conviviality in the conditions in which it
takes place at present, that it can turn easily into favorable environment for a
xenophobic message. In some cases, this message has been thrown by groups
of pro right-wingers who already existed before, vaguely identified with the pro-
Franco past or with an idealized Phalanx, or by teenagers of aesthetics
skinhead that they have happened to include the immigrants inside of his
groups object of violence. As a whole, these parties can turn out to be
dangerous for his trend to the use of the violence, but his capacity of social
attraction is minimal because his xenophobic message is wrapped or
accompanied for many other connotations that the autochthonous population
rejects massively. (1).
Nowadays the only successes of a xenophobic parties with a relevant power
are Plataforma per Catalunya led by Josep Anglada, and others as
Espaa2000 or Phalanx. PxC's political program is based on the opposition to
the Islamic immigration, which it considers to be a threat for the Catalan and
Spanish identity, and claims the application of " tolerance zero " before the
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delinquency and the terrorism and the defense of the traditional values of the
family. The party proposes a more solid regulation to the immigration.
Espaa 2000 (E-2000) is a Spanish political party of extreme right that one
defines like patriotically, social and national. It was constituted in July of 2002. It
lacks parliamentary representation its implantation is only to municipal level in
three localities of the Valencian and different Community more in the
Community of Madrid.
His counterparts in Europe would be the National Front in France (that they are
present at the congresses and whose leader Jean-Marie Le Pen travelled to
Spain to support the candidates of Spain 2000 in March, 2000, when the party
still was the Platform 2000) or the Party of the Freedom of Jrg Haider in
Austria.
Some information developers in this regard think in the Barometers on
immigration of the CIS of last years, that they show a continuous growth of the
percentage of those who believe that the number of immigrants in Spain already
is excessive, up to coming to 60 % in 2009, and from the mention to the
immigration as one of the principal problems of the country, placed in the
Barometer of 2009 secondly after the unemployment. To this it is necessary to
add that more than the half of the interviewed ones (58 %) they were showing
his agreement in the year 2008 with the phrase " Nowadays in Spain a relation
exists between civil insecurity and immigration ", opposite to 26 % in
disagreement.(2)
Conclusion
It is not very probable that in a predictable future they would be successful in
Spain parties whose principal electoral offer is xenophobic, racist or against
inmigrants. The groups that try it offer too many reminiscences of last pro-
Franco decades. Though the message of these groups, as they have developed
in other European countries, it is not necessarily tied to ideologies of extreme
right, and often it receives the support of former voters of left sides - is the case
of the National Front in France-, appeals always to the nationalism, which in
Spain is weak for his manipulation in the Franco's regime and for the
competition of the peripheral nationalists.
Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction between the autochthonous ones in the
neighborhoods of immigrants' high concentration, the increase of the
delinquency related to bands or foreign individuals, the deterioration of the
public general opinion about the immigration and the existence of political
groups that try to capitalize this discomfort in the local level, they can motivate a
displacement towards more restrictive positions towards the immigration by part
of the principal parties.
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References:
(1) La guerra por el dinero de todos | Edicin impresa | EL PAS. 2014. La guerra por el
dinero de todos | Edicin impresa | EL PAS. [ONLINE] Available
at:http://elpais.com/diario/2005/05/02/espana/1114984801_850215.html.
(2) 2014. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ikuspegi-
inmigracion.net/documentos/barometros/2012/bar_2012_cas.pdf
Others:
2014. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/-
Archivos/Marginales/2780_2799/2792/Ft2792.pdf.
2014. . [ONLINE] Available
at:http://www.williamchislett.com/public/Spain_Going_Places_Chislett.pdf