Spanish Parties Research Articles

Descriptive Political Representation of Latin Americans in Spanish Local Politics: Demographic Concentration, Political Opportunities, and Parties’ Inclusiveness

Latin Americans represent one of the most sizable migrant communities in Spain. Yet, unlike other minority groups, they count with longer migration tradition, linguistic and cultural similarities with the Spanish population, and easier access to Spanish nationality. Drawing on original data covering a large number of candidates ( N = 5,055), this article examines whether this apparently favorable configuration guarantees the nomination of candidates from this minority group at local elections in municipalities with strong demographic presence of Latin American residents. Our findings indicate that this group is still underrepresented in Spanish politics. Few Latin American candidates are fielded by political parties, and even fewer (<2%) manage to achieve elected office. To interpret these results, we examine the extent to which Spanish parties field minority candidates. We show that while some parties are proactively including these candidates, only few nominate them in secure positions of the electoral lists and that Spanish parties’ inclusiveness does not seem to be aligned with Latin American voters’ partisan preferences.

“We Have Taken a Major Step Forward Today”: The Use of Twitter by Spanish Minor Parties

ABSTRACT Minor parties – also known as “third parties” in the US – are integral components of democratic systems. Despite being ignored by the mainstream media, contemporary Spanish politics reveal that minor parties may challenge the hegemony of traditional organizations, and even enter parliamentary politics. This paper analyzes Spanish minor parties’ social media communication in the context of the April 2019 election. A sample of 1,498 tweets was content-analyzed, gathered from the official Twitter profiles of the four main national minor parties: PACMA, the Communist Party of the Spanish Peoples, Zero Cuts, and VOX. Results indicate a lack of party-citizen interaction, as well as a meta-campaigning approach whereby the tweets’ topics and functions are mostly related to the parties themselves and campaign behavior.

Transformations of the spanish party-political landscape: internal and external vectors

The paper examines the party-political crisis in the Kingdom of Spain. The triggers of the political crisis are analyzed, the results of the parliamentary election in 2015, 2016 and 2019 are considered and the main trends in the Spanish electoral process are highlighted. The study carries out a content analysis of the programs presented by leading Spanish political parties prior to the 2016 and 2019 parliamentary election. The article describes the run-up to the off -year voting on November 10, 2019. The research presents a comparative analysis of sociological surveys, distinguishes the most topical issues for Spanish voters and fi gures out their political preferences. The article shows the infl uence the internal political situation has on the international position of the Kingdom and its role in the European Union. The research identifi es the main problems in forging party coalitions, underscores the stances of regional and nationalist parties, analyzes the results of the resolved crisis in 2020 and characterizes new Spanish government.

La cuestión catalana: origen, desarrollo, y perspectivas

Catalonia is one of the richest regions in Spain and, thanks to its Statute of Autonomy, it enjoys a self-government comparable to that existing in federal States. It has been part of Spain for as long as Spain exists, but in the course of history there have been several episodes of disagreement and attempts at receiving independence. Since the beginning of this century, a sovereignty process has been launched by supporters of secession, ignorant of the Constitution and Spanish legality, that culminated, in October 2017, with a unilateral declaration of independence, which involved temporary intervention by the Spanish Government and the trial and condemnation of the main leaders, in addition to not being recognized by any country or international organization in the world. Catalan society is plural, formed in part by emigrants from other parts of Spain, and is very divided on this issue. Supporters of independence have never managed to obtain 50% of the votes in any of the numerous elections carried out, although there is a majority favorable to increasing the level of autonomy. The solution to this conflict can only come with the achievement of a political agreement that establishes a new relationship between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, which satisfies a majority, without the need to break up. But this solution will be difficult because of both the radicalism of some separatist leaders and the lack of agreement between the Spanish parties on how to approach the issue.

El concepto de cambio en el discurso político en Twitter: el caso de Ciudadanos durante las Elecciones generales de 2016

Spanish political discourse has already been studied in numerous investigations from different linguistic perspectives, but it continues to be an area that arouses interest among linguists. Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze the political discourse carried out by the Spanish party Ciudadanos on Twitter. In particular, we aim to find out how some of the linguistic argumentation mechanisms were used before the 2016 General Elections in Spain. Specifically, we will focus on analyzing evaluative language, operators, and argumentative connectors, considering the concepts of argumentation theory in language (Anscombre and Ducrot, 1994; Portolés 1998, 2001, 2004; Fuentes Rodríguez and Alcaide Lara, 2007) and the typology of axiological language (Puzynina 1992).

ЛЕВЫЙ И ПРАВЫЙ ПОПУЛИЗМ В ИСПАНИИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ПЕРЕСТРОЙКИ ПАРТИЙНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ: "ВОКС" И "ПОДЕМОС"

For many years, right-wing populism was considered irrelevant in Spain. The recent success of the Vox party, first at the regional and then at the national level, is clear evidence that the transformation of the Spanish party system continues. Moreover, right-wing and left-wing populism (represented respectively by the Vox and Podemos parties) coexist today in the context of its increasing fragmentation. The article attempts to answer the question why two types of populist parties emerged in Spain, what are the key differences between them and what place they occupy in the country's party system. The research intention involves identifying the main characteristics of right and left populism based on the analysis of the latest scientific literature and the subsequent assessment of the prospects of the Vox and Podemos parties. The factors of their electoral successes are determined; it is assumed that the territorial factor plays a special role in the differentiation of Spanish populism. The study uses the methods of comparative analysis and social constructivism, and populism itself is considered within the framework of an ideational approach. Based on the results of the study, the characteristics of left and right populism in Spain were determined on the example of the Vox and Podemos parties. It was concluded that the case of Spain is of particular interest in the European context, as it allows one to study the electoral successes and prospects of both left and right populists. The role of the territorial factor in delimiting left and right populism was emphasized.

La consolidación electoral del desequilibrio territorial e identitario en España (2008-2016). Réplica al artículo "Las huellas electorales del nacionalismo español"

El cambio del sistema de partidos y la profundización de éstos en la crisis territorial en el periodo posterior a la Gran Recesión de 2008 hacen interesante explorar también la polarización de la ciudadanía en el eje centro-periferia y la configuración del nuevo espacio electoral con respecto a este eje. El propósito de este artículo es conocer cómo se distribuyen las estructuras identitarias y a las preferencias sobre la organización territorial del Estado de las bases electorales de los partidos españoles bajo el nuevo contexto político-electoral. Para ello, se agregan los estudios post-electorales del CIS de 2008 a 2019, que se exploran de forma gráfica y mediante regresiones logísticas multinomiales. Nuestros hallazgos confirman que el deterioro apuntado por Jiménez y Navarro (2015) para las elecciones de 2011 no fue coyuntural, sino que se trata de una tendencia que se consolida desde 2015, estabilizándose hasta 2019. Específicamente, se consolida la erosión del apoyo al Estado de las autonomías y aumenta de manera general el apoyo centralismo. Esta erosión no va acompañada, sin embargo, de una desvinculación generalizada de las identidades compartidas, aunque aumenten las identidades nacionales exclusivas. En cuanto al nuevo sistema de partidos, las bases electorales de los partidos se polarizan en gran medida en cuanto a sus preferencias sobre la organización territorial del Estado, pero no así con la identidad nacional.

The Topic of Catalonia in the Election Campaigns of Spanish Parties in 2019

The role of the Catalan issue in the period of early general elections in 2019 in Spain is considered. The author examines how parties use the topic of Catalonia in the political struggle and if this topic is relevant for Spanish citizens. The problem of separatism is still one of the urgent issues for Spain, so in the election campaigns it has a special position.

Batalla de frames en la campaña electoral de abril de 2019. Engagement y promoción de mensajes de los partidos políticos en Facebook

Framing processes are one of the preferred objects of study in the area of Communication, despite the frequent criticism regarding their theoretical and methodological strength. This study follows the proposal of Matthes and Kohring (2008) of the detection of frames through statistical analysis of clusters that operationalize the components as defined by Entman (2003) using framing elements. This is applied to the study of the electoral campaign on Facebook of the main Spanish political parties in the election of 28 April 2019. All messages published on this social network during the 15 days of the electoral campaign were captured automatically. The use of four large frames by the parties was detected, corresponding to events and political questions, request for vote, the rival party, and media treatment. The parties used these frames to different degrees: from the institutional and positive campaign of the PSOE, to the campaign aimed at criticizing the ruling party of the main opposition party, the PP, through the inclination towards media treatment of Unidas Podemos, or a focus on their own events and proposals by Ciudadanos and Vox. A negative correlation was detected between the frames most used by the political formations as a whole and the level of user engagement on Facebook, although the use of frames by PSOE and Unidas Podemos showed a greater parallelism with the levels of interaction in this social network. Resumen Los procesos de enmarcado, encuadre o framing son uno de los objetos de estudio preferentes en el área de Comunicación, a pesar de las frecuentes y reputadas críticas sobre su solidez teórica y metodológica. En esta investigación se sigue la propuesta de Matthes y Kohring (2008) para la detección de frames mediante análisis estadístico de conglomerados que operacionaliza en elementos de enmarcado los componentes de la definición de Entman (1993). Se aplica al estudio de la campaña electoral que hicieron los principales partidos políticos españoles a través de Facebook en la convocatoria del 28 de abril de 2019. Se capturaron automatizadamente todos los mensajes publicados en esta red social en los quince días de campaña electoral, detectándose el uso de cuatro grandes frames por parte de los partidos: marco de eventos y cuestiones políticas, marco de petición de voto, marco del partido rival y marco del tratamiento mediático. Los partidos utilizaron en diferente medida estos marcos: desde la campaña institucional y en positivo del PSOE; a la campaña volcada en criticar al partido gobernante del principal partido de la oposición, el PP; pasando por la inclinación hacia el tratamiento mediático de Unidas Podemos, o a centrarse en sus propios actos y propuestas de Ciudadanos y Vox. Se detectó una correlación negativa entre los frames más empleados por las formaciones políticas en su conjunto y el nivel de engagement en Facebook, si bien la utilización concreta de los marcos por parte del PSOE y Unidas Podemos sí mostró cierto paralelismo con los niveles de interacción en esta red social.

Reviving Albert Camus: Nonviolence and Pro-Independence PR Activism in Catalonia

In recent years, the electoral situation in Spain, has been marked by the issue of Catalan independence, which has conditioned the electoral agenda of all parties and the frames of political discourse. Against the idea of a violent movement that the Spanish nationalist parties and government want to transmit to Spanish society about the separatist movement, the nationalist parties’ and Catalan government turn to nonviolent discourse and action. This nonviolent behavior is based on what in the past century was defended by some public intellectuals, such as Albert Camus. Indeed, Camus is our exemplar because he also raises issues that continue to be relevant, especially in advocating principles and methods of nonviolent political action. Furthermore, Camus did so in situations of war and injustice through tactics typical of political communication the of activist groups. This article wants to show how current and how effective the ideas of Camus are today, when it is 60 years since his death, in some national electoral discourses and actions, and serve for activism PR purposes in the political communication frame.

La derecha española dividida: posiciones ideológicas y clivaje territorial

Entre los diferentes cambios que han tenido lugar en el sistema de partidos español el presente artículo se centra en el cese de la hegemonía de un único partido en el ámbito de la derecha. Se necesita de un análisis detenido de la aparición de un nuevo bloque de derecha tripartito que conforman un partido histórico (PP) y dos nuevos partidos (Ciudadanos y Vox) siendo este último de derecha radical.
 Mediante diversas fuentes de evidencia empírica que incluyen datos de opinión pública, de expertos y análisis de programas electorales se aborda la orientación, perfil ideológico y posiciones en materia territorial de los tres partidos de derecha que cuentan con proyección en toda España.
 El trabajo pone de manifiesto la existencia de espacios de proximidad entre los tres partidos que los contraponen con las orientaciones de partidos de otros bloques. A la vez, el análisis pone de relieve los matices en las posiciones entre PP, VOX y Ciudadanos que permiten la existencia de competición en el interior del bloque de derecha por conquistar espacios y conseguir electores.

Nationalism and populism on the left: The case of Podemos

AbstractThis article provides an empirical exploration of the relation between nationalism and populism on the left of the political spectrum. The Spanish party Podemos is a key case study for such an analysis, as it is a left‐populist actor that has made extensive use of nationalist rhetoric in its discourse. Through a discourse analysis on a corpus that includes speeches by Podemos leadership and primary data such as interviews and original unpublished material, this article studies the nationalist dimension of Podemos and its relation with the party's much‐discussed populism. The analysis shows that the Podemos leadership deliberately embeds nationalism in its populist strategy: Nationalism is a central element of the party's populist project and serves to advance an alternative form of national identification that challenges that of the right wing. Through a resignification of national pride and belonging, Podemos constructs an image of Spain that refers to an inclusive welfare state, to people's mobilization, and to a moral community that is not delimited by lingual or ethnic particularisms.

Two-bloc Logic, Polarisation and Coalition Government: The November 2019 General Election in Spain

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the role played by polarisation in the Spanish party system. It first analyses the failure in the attempts to form a government after the 28 April 2019 general election in Spain. It shows how polarisation and short-term calculations made government formation impossible and led to a new general election in November that year. The article also describes how prior to the electoral campaign, the exhumation of Francisco Franco’s body and the riots in Catalonia, which added to the saliency of territorial conflict, fostered votes for the radical right-wing party Vox. It will also be shown how the election results led to a fragmented and more polarised Congress. Finally, the article discusses the formation of the first minority coalition government in the recent democratic history of Spain – one made up of the PSOE and UP – its structure and its potential implications for the Spanish party system.

Political and affective polarisation in a democracy in crisis: The E-Dem panel survey dataset (Spain, 2018–2019)

The E-DEM dataset provides information on the evolution of political and affective polarisation and electoral behaviour in the aftermath of the political crisis that shook the Spanish party system starting in 2014. The dataset is formed by a four-wave online panel survey of the Spanish voting age population between late October 2018 and May 2019. The four waves coincide with key moments in Spanish political life including local, regional, national, and European elections, as well as the conviction of Catalan secessionist leaders. It also covers the six-month period of the surge of Spain's new radical right party, Vox, spanning from shortly before its first major electoral success in Spain's most populous region, Andalusia, to its consolidation in the May 2019 European elections. The sample, which reflects the general population in terms of age, gender, and geographical province, consists of 1,484 panellists who completed the four waves, while the samples for individual waves are larger, ranging from 1,659 to 2,501 respondents. The data is especially useful for researchers who wish to explore dynamics of ideological and affective polarisation, factors that explain the rise of new parties, and for those investigating the evolution of political attitudes in general.

Die Macht der Bilder und Bilder der Macht: die sprachliche Konstruktion von Nationalismus und Konservatismus in der strategischen politischen Kommunikation von Vox España

AbstractFrom a theoretical and empirical linguistic point of view, this paper emphasizes the importance of the relationship between populism and the media. The aim of this article is to explore the language use of the Spanish right wing populism party Vox on the basis of its multimodal postings on the social network Instagram. For the analysis of their Instagram account, a suitable multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) provides a variety of methods and allows a theoretical integration into constructivism. A hashtag-analysis reveals that Vox’s ideology consists of a nativist and ethnocentric nationalism on the one hand and conservatism on the other. With a topos analysis, the linguistic realisations of these core elements are illustrated with two case studies.

Data from the GIPEyOP online election poll for the 2015 Spanish General election.

The general elections of 2015 in Spain took place in the middle of the Great Recession after several years of austerity economic policies. This election caused a political earthquake that shook the Spanish party system. During the campaign of that election, GIPEyOP (Elections and Public Opinion Research Group from University of Valencia) conducted a survey to collect relevant data about the electorate beliefs, intentions and motivations. This article describes the data set attained, which comprises 71 variables after removing, to ensure full anonymity, those variables that would potentially allow respondents to be identified. Respondents answered a self-administered online questionnaire and were recruited using chain sampling. A total of 14,261 valid observations were collected between 27th November and 18th December 2015. GIPEyOP employed the data collected up to 14th December to deliver a prediction of the election outcomes during that election campaign. Among other issues, this data set may be reused to assess theories of expectations’ formation, to spot how social networks spread geographically and to measure gender, age and education technological gap of the Spanish population.

Populism and Pop Cultures: Podemos, the Political Use of Music and the Party as a 'Pop Product'

The role of 'popular cultures' and symbolic aspects such as narratives, imaginaries, audio and visual products in the emergence, success, and development of populism is poorly explored in literature. This article aims at investigating the relationship between populism and popular cultures by analyzing the case of the Spanish party Podemos. From the beginning, for the founding nucleus of Podemos it was crucial to try to be hegemonic, to match common sense, popular attitudes and identities, and to go beyond the traditional boundaries inside which the alternative left was enclosed. The article focuses on the relationship between the political evolution of the party and its use of music as a political tool and a ground for cultural debate. The link emerges between these political uses of music and the trajectory of the party, where the latter influences the former. Moreover, by debating on the political role of music, Podemos leaders delved deeper into he wider issue of the relationship between political hegemony and popular cultures, and discussed it.

Das spanische Parteiensystem von 1977 bis 2019: Veränderung oder Transformation?

This article investigates if a party system change has taken place in Spain from June 1977 to January 2019 . The operationalization of Smith’s (1989) definition of party system change requires the distinction between “normal” and “unusual” values of the indicators, which are subject to constant fluctuations . This distinction was achieved by defining unusual values as values that fall outside the area of plus/minus one standard deviation around the mean of the respective indicator . If an indicator’s values are unusual several times in a row, Smith considered it to have undergone change . The distinction between limited and general change as well as a party system transformation depends on how many indicators measure the properties of different party groups that undergo change . The results show that the Spanish party system underwent a series of limited changes from 1977 to 2015 . Despite the following massive shifts in the distribution of seats and the increases in format, this period can only be qualified as one of (weak) general change, but not of party system transformation .

Communicative failures of the political discourse of the spanish party Podemos

The article considers the effectiveness of the Spanish party Podemos discourse from the standpoint of cognitive science and pragmalinguistics. It argues that inconsistency in the development of discourse as well as communicative failures tend to play a significant role in promoting or degrading political communication and, as a result, affect the dynamics of electoral support.Given the thesis of linguo-pragmatists that the source of communicative failure can be both the communicant himself and the circumstances of the communicative act, the author carries out a discourse analysis of the rhetoric of the Podemos leaders in a chronological framework - 2014-2019, focusing not only on the evolution of pragmalinguistic practices, but also on the pragmatic context of communicative events.Having ascertained the high media dependence of the Podemos discourse and its performative nature, it has been revealed that the repeated nature of “performative misfires” or communicative failures leads to disruption of the discourse sequence, a decrease in its effectiveness, and even erosion of the communicator’s discursive identity.It seems that if the aggressive communication tactics of “media scandals” are likely to bring politicians popularity at the starting stage, then voters subsequently expect logic and consistency from their representatives, and the discontinuity and incomprehensible change of the discursive framework for the audience may lead to uncontrolled consequences for the addresser. It is recorded that the decline in Podemos’s electoral support in the general and municipal elections in Spain in 2019 may refer to large media scandals around the party’s activities, which have been triggered by violations of discursive logic.

Joining the party: Incentives and motivations of members and registered sympathizers in contemporary multi-speed membership parties

Many parties have updated their recruitment strategies and offer softer routes for joining their ranks. In some parties, registered sympathizers are given virtually the same rights as traditional members with substantially lower costs. This begs the question, why would somebody take the further step of joining such parties as full members rather than sympathizers? This article analyzes this question by using membership surveys from three left-wing Spanish parties. As such, it explores the usefulness of the general incentives model (GIM) for explaining the decisions of these two groups of affiliates. We find that full members and sympathizers differ in the motives they have to join the party and in their evaluations of the diverse types of incentives included in the GIM. Candidate selection incentives seem particularly important for sympathizers, whereas selective outcome incentives, selective process benefits, collective outcome benefits and altruistic motivations play a more significant role for members.