Against the far right, southern Europe is no longer vaccinated
The countries of southern Europe not only share the same geographical space on the map of the Old Continent. Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus were previously considered safe from the rise of the far right, due to their recent political history and the still fresh memory of far-right regimes – Italy being an obvious exception.
Spain, Portugal and Greece were, almost simultaneously in the 1970s, the last to get rid of dictatorships, while Cyprus has long paid – and is still paying by the division of its territory (the northern part of Cyprus has been under Turkish occupation since 1974) – the consequences of the interference of the Greek dictatorship on the island.
Progress everywhere
A quick glance at recent election results and opinion polls for the European elections shows how far we are from this landscape today. The Spanish far-right party Vox, third in the 2023 legislative elections (12.38%), should maintain a double-digit score. The party is registered in the European Conservatives and Reformists (CRE) group. Chegaalso third in the presidential election in Portugal in 2021, as well as in the recent legislative elections with an impressive 18.1%, is one of the forces that will considerably increase the presence of the European parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID).
In Cyprus, where Elam won 8.25% in the 2019 European elections, the party now comes third in the polls, with a vote estimate of 10%. As for Greece
