Silencing Feminism? Gender and the Rise of the Nationalist Far Right in Spain F eminism in Spain is experiencing a paradox. On the one hand, the March 8 (8M) movement held two feminist strikes, in 2018 and 2019, that were attended by multitudes. This is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a wave of worldwide feminist strikes that began in 2017. The slogan Ni una menos (Not one woman less), coined in Latin America, shows the impetus of these feminist mobilizations against all forms of gendered violence. In Spain, poor judicial performance following the gang rape case called La manada (the wolf pack) fueled the first feminist strike in 2018. On the other hand, as a result of the electoral processes held between December 2018 and November 2019, the nationalist far-right party Vox has entered all levels of Spanish representative politics, receiving the third most votes at the national level.With this sudden shift, Spain is no longer an exception with respect to the rise of the nationalist far Right in Europe. After the Democratic Transition that followed General Francisco Franco's National-Catholic dictatorship , far-right parties were largely irrelevant in Spain. 1 Aside from forming small parties that had no parliamentary representation, far-right tendencies coexisted within the broad spectrum of the right-wing Partido Popular. In fact, Vox was founded in 2013 as a scission of the radical wing of this party. 2 After a series of electoral defeats, Vox gained political representation in December 2018 and reintroduced the far Right into the political scene of the southern European country, with great media resonance and visibility. Why now? Vox's electoral This research was made possible thanks to the InterTalentum-Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship cofounded by the European Commission and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Thanks to Virginia Maquieira and Lucía Echevarría for their stimulating comments, Ana Mateo for assisting me in fieldwork, Luisa Martín Rojo for her inspiring lectures on discourse analysis, Tanya Whatling for the English revision, and Massimo Caporilli for his constant support.1 Only one far-right party, the Fuerza Nueva (New force), had a single member in the National Parliament in the 1979 legislature (Ramos and Büttner 2017).2 See Altozano and Llorente (2018) and Sánchez-Dragó (2019) for an account of the emergence of Vox from the point of view of its leaders. Academic and activist research is being published at the time of the drafting this article; see Ferreira (2019), Rubio-Pueyo (2019), and Urbán (2019).
The virulent opposition to gender violence policy championed by the Spanish Far Right Party Vox since it gained political representation in December 2018 has been remarkable. This opposition has turned gender violence into a language of political struggle at a time of intense feminist mobilization and feminist influence in government. What does this ideological battle over gender violence reveal about Vox's political project? This article argues that this policy conflict provides a window through which to understand the authoritarian core of the Spanish Far Right and shows that feminist critique is key to its unpacking. It proposes further research venues for an anthropology of the state and of policy informed by feminism and engaged with the pressing problems of our times.
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