Posted on: euronews | April 27th, 2019

When Spain goes to the polls on Sunday it will be one of the tightest election in decades. It will also be the third general election in four years.

No single party is expected to gain a majority which means the main five parties have a real chance of sharing power in the next government – and on Friday their political leaders told their supporters to prepare for power.

For once this election is not being dominated by Spain’s unemployment problem but by Catalonia and the rise of the far right.

They’re the anti-immigrant Vox party whose support base lies in the southern region of Andalucia where most migrants enter Spain.

For now, they don’t even have a seat in the national parliament, but in a few days, they could be part of the next government.

Left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says he’s scared that the right wing, led by Pablo Casados’s People’s party, will be able to form a winning coalition with the Vox party.

If it comes together such a coalition would be part of a broader far-right movement that has already entered government in some European countries, notably Italy.

«No one gave Trump any chance of becoming president and he is. No one thought (far-right Jair) Bolsonaro would become president of Brazil, and he has,» Sanchez told a crowd of around 3,000 in the working class Madrid suburb of Vallecas.

The polls indicate that Sanchez might only survive if he joins forces with Catalonia’s small nationalist parties.

During the election campaign, the right accused Sanchez of being a traitor as he steadfastly refused to discuss Catalonia.

Under the most optimistic scenario for the left, Sanchez could stay on as leader of the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy with just the Podemos party as an ally.

Official opinion polls ended on Monday, with up to four in ten voters still undecided.

Since then, informal soundings by media organisations suggest voters’ intentions may have shifted, with Vox the possible beneficiary.

That has raised the prospect of the rightist coalition, which would also include centre-right Ciudadanos, winning enough votes to form a majority — although many view a deadlocked parliament and fresh elections as the likeliest option.

To read the original post, click here.