VOX - SPANISH VARIANT OF RADICAL RIGHT PARTY IN PRESENT-DAY EUROPE

For many years, Spain was one of a few European countries without an influential radical right party. In the recent years, the situation has changed sharply as a marginal right radical party VOX turned into a significant force - a third party in the Cortes according to the number of votes. The stormy take off of VOX cannot be separated from the systemic crisis of the Spanish polity which manifested itself particularly in the Catalan conflict. The threat to territorial integrity gave rise to a sense of impaired national dignity. Spanish nationalism, which seemed to recede into the background of the societal agenda during the first post-Francoist decades, has revived in a more radical guise. VOX advocates militant nationalism and upholds traditional values challenging the liberal paradigm of societal development. By sharply criticizing the liberal democratic regime VOX intends not to dismantle but to reform it. The revision assumes the reinforcement of centralizing and unitary origins in the Spanish state through the abolition of the autonomies' rights and also the radical restrictions of the rights of ethnic minorities (Catalans, Basques, immigrants). Such standpoint entails the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies in the mass consciousness. At the same time, the party does not stand against the democratic system and does not raise the question on the restoration of authoritarianism in Spain. VOX, therefore, discards some principles of liberal democracy (a number of elements of political pluralism), without rejecting the other (rights and freedoms for the majority of the population).