Far-right Vox looks likely to be the major beneficiary of Spain’s November general election, having jumped from 12.4 percent of the vote in 2023 to 19 percent last week in polling from El País. In recent months, the far-right party has continued to gain ground against a backdrop that, until the housing protests, had been dominated by the fallout from the mass influx of migrants to Ceuta this summer. The dramatic images, from late July, of an estimated 72,000 people streaming in from Morocco to Spain’s north African exclave were immediately seized upon by Vox, and its media allies, as they imposed a narrative of invasion and national betrayal across the broader right-wing bloc.

This week we discuss Vox’s electoral strategy before a poll which could see the far-right enter government in coalition with the conservative right Partido Popular for the first time since Spain’s transition to democracy. To do so I am joined by political analyst Connor Mulhern, who works on The Reactionary International research project: https://act.progressive.international/reactionary

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Less than two weeks after a wave of housing protests broke out across Spain, centre-left prime minister Pedro Sánchez called an early general election on Mondayyesterday. Upending the country’s political agenda in just days, the protests created an opportunity for an embattled Sánchez to go to the polls on more favorable terms. He is now framing the election as a choice between his defense of the social majority and right-wing parties aligned with speculators and vulture funds.

Today on Sobremesa podcast we discuss the events of the last week, including the tragic death of Maricarmen on Wednesday, and look ahead to the election campaign with Professor Joe Haslam. As always if you like what we are producing, please considering supporting us on our buy me a coffee page.

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On Wednesday September 23, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from the Madrid flat where she had lived for more than 70 years. The vulture fund that owned the property had raised her monthly rent from €500 to €2,650. Removed on a stretcher and taken to hospital, Maricarmen became the focus of widespread anger over Spain’s housing crisis - where rents have increased 87 percent over the last decade.

Thousands protested in Madrid that evening, with demonstrations spreading elsewhere in Spain, followed by a far larger march last Saturday of up to 300,000 people. In the immediate aftermath of that march a massive protest camp was step up in Madrid's iconic Puerta del Sol square - in a move that echoed the Indignados occupations 15 years earlier. For five nights in a row now, thousands of people have packed Sol demanding an end to speculation and soaring rental prices.

Today on Sobremesa Podcast, we talk to Hannah Fakir, an activist with the Sindicato de Inquilinas Madrid’s tenants union - who organized the non-violent resistance to Maricarmen’s eviction and are behind the protest camp. I talked to her in Sol as protestors chanted in the background. As always if you like what we are producing and want to keep the podcast sustainable, please consider donating to our buy me a coffee page.

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