Santiago Abascal, Spain’s far-right potential kingmaker

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Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, repeated a question to his rivals in a sharp voice. “What is woman?” he asked in the pre-election debate. For Abascal, an ultra-conservative nationalist likely to teeter on the brink of power-sharing in this weekend’s election, it was a way to combine two Vox trademarks: a culture war on gender and alarmism on security.

She said, “If you think that a man who thinks he is a woman is a woman, then you are wrong. You are very wrong and you have put women at risk.” In his eyes was a transgender rights law passed by the socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez, which for Abascal is a symbol of the prime minister’s egregious alienation from most voters.

The majestic-bearded Vox leader, 47, has combined hellish bombast with amiable banter in a campaign where he presents himself as a politician who understands people. Since he took control of the party in 2014, he has led it from obscurity through a phase of “shy” voter growth to one where its supporters are proud to announce their support. Vox was the third most popular party in local elections in May and is seeking to repeat the feat.

Polls indicate the winner on Sunday will be the conservative People’s Party – which Abascal derided as a corrupt, spineless part of Spain’s now-defunct two-party system. Its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijoa, is likely to need Vox’s parliamentary support to win the absolute majority needed to take office, despite saying he would rather avoid a coalition. So Spain is asking: what does Abascal want?

One goal is to repeal a transgender bill and a law on gender-based violence that, according to Abascal, “dehumanizes and erases women”. But his efforts for change extend far beyond. He dismisses anger over rising temperatures as “climate bigotry” and wants to burn more fossil fuels. Vox has also called for a naval blockade against migrant boats and warned of a “Muslim onslaught” in his anti-immigration campaigns. It seeks to repeal laws that have strengthened LGBT+ rights, broadened access to abortion, and decriminalized euthanasia.

But the most consistent theme in Abascal’s life is hostility to separatists who wanted to separate from Spain. Born in Bilbao in 1976, he grew up in the Basque Country during the darkest days of Etah’s violent struggle for independence. His family was under constant threat as his father was a politician who was a staunch critic of the terrorist group. The family business, a clothing store in Amurio, was ransacked and set on fire several times.

“Whenever we were attacked, instead of keeping quiet, we went to the press. Because it had to be condemned. And the less we kept quiet, the more they attacked us,” he once said.

Abascal remembers seeing bodyguards checking the family’s car for bombs before leaving the house. When he was nine, Etta shot and killed his father’s friend, the local postman. “She put my life on the path of politics,” he said.

At university he studied sociology, speaking out against nationalism and its use of myths, including the Basque style. In his dissertation, he quoted philosopher Karl Popper as saying that nationalism “produces our tribal instincts, our passions and prejudices”.

“Everything he criticized about Basque nationalism, he reiterated in Spanish nationalism,” says Miguel González, author of Vox Inc., a book about the party. “He’s either a freak or he has a memory like a goldfish.”

Abascal joined the PP, but in 2013 was part of the group that, frustrated with corruption, left the party to establish then-prime minister Mariano Rajoy for not taking a tougher stand against Vox and separatists. Jose Luis Gonzalez Quiros, another Vox founder, said the original goal was to pressure PP for change. But when Abascal took control, he put the party on a different path.

Abascal is a smart and ambitious person, says Gonzalez Quiros. “He saw an opportunity in the fact that the right wing neglected a segment of his public, and he set himself to take advantage of it.”

To keep Vox alive, Abascal took donations from radical Catholic groups opposed to abortion and gay marriage. The party’s breakthrough came in 2017 when an unconstitutional referendum sparked the Catalan push for independence, sparking separatism protests in the rest of Spain and voters flocking to the party.

Vox has its own internal factions. On economic policy, its pro-market liberals disagree with its protectionists and state interventionists. Some voxistas There have been outcries when the party is described as a return to Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, but Abascal has said that there is room in the party for “others who defend Franco’s work”.

Since the 2019 election, he has allowed those who care about closed borders and Catholicism to gain dominance. He has tried to soften some of the hard edges in the current campaign, but where Vox is already in power with the PP in local government, he has abolished environment and equality departments and banned LGBT+ flags on public buildings.

How many votes Abascal receives on Sunday will decide whether he will have to make concessions to govern with the PP at the national level, or whether Vox will legislate. When a voter urged him to “set things right” on a visit to the market, he replied: “It’s not going to be easy. I won’t cheat you like the others.”

barney.jopson@ft.com