(CN) — It's becoming an all-too-familiar narrative in Europe: In Spain, too, a newfangled political party once considered too far to the right and extremist to govern may be on the cusp of just that after Sunday elections.
Spaniards go to the polls in pivotal national parliamentary elections that could see the country flip the switch and turn rightward after five years of progressive governments under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
In the run-up to Sunday's election, polls have tightened, giving Sánchez hope he can cling on with a new center-left coalition in which his Socialists play the dominant role.
Most polling suggests, however, a rightward lurch is taking place in Spain, a trend across the European Union.
The latest polling data shows 34% of Spanish intend to vote for the Popular Party and 28% for Sánchez and his Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, or PSOE, the longtime left force in Spain.
The race for third is between Vox and Sumar, a left-wing party founded by Yolanda Díaz, who was Sanchez's junior governing partner in the outgoing government. Sumar is an offshoot of Podemos, a radical-left party that emerged around the same time as Vox during Spain's deep economic recession following the 2008 financial meltdown.
In the last national elections in November 2019, the Socialists and Podemos outperformed expectations and went on to form Spain's first multiparty cabinet; that coalition stayed together until this spring.
The Socialist-Podemos coalition was the first of its kind since the restoration of democracy following the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
With national elections mandatory by next year, Sánchez decided to call for an early poll in the hope of snuffing out the rising popularity for Spain's conservatives.
It's not like the PP would be breaking a taboo if it agreed to a Vox coalition. Center-right and far-right coalitions have emerged in Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Germany at either national or regional levels.
For now, pundits believe the Popular Party will likely fall short of securing a majority and face the tough scenario where its leader, the technocratic Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will have to decide what to do about Vox.
The PP-Vox formula has begun to be field tested in two Spanish regional governments: That of Estremadura, a hot and dry southwestern region, and in Valencia, a populous port and agricultural region on the Mediterranean Sea south of Barcelona.
But a PP-Vox coalition at Spain's national level would send a strong message to the rest of Europe: In this fractured state of European politics, centrist parties on both the left and right are losing clout and unwillingly finding themselves in need to rule alongside smaller, more contentious parties to stay in power.
The PP, similar to other big-tent conservative parties like Germany's Christian Democrats, is hemorrhaging voters lured by the more extremist parties, and principally to Vox in Spain's case.
And Vox is a scary prospect: Its members deny global warming, oppose giving basic rights to homosexual couples and are on a crusade-like mission to cancel out the aspirations for autonomy expressed by regions like Catalonia and the Basque Country.
Vox's leader, Santiago Abascal, hails from Bilbao, the Basque Country's largest city; he was born in prominent political family that was targeted by ETA, the militant Basque separatist terrorist group.
He left the Popular Party in 2013 and helped form Vox, which was born during a wave of new political parties spring up in Europe, a continent rocked by the bloc's life-threatening debt crisis following the 2008 global recession caused by the American housing market collapse.
Barring election surprises, Feijóo seems fated to have to make that Faustian bargain over to govern or not with Vox.
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