Sometimes the circumstance can arise that two apparently disconnected territories end up telling the same story. That is what is happening now with Extremadura and Aragon. The negotiations between the Popular Party and Vox remain stuck. Not for lack of parliamentary arithmetic, but for an excess of mistrust. Mutual crossed reproaches.
This Sunday, February 8, regional elections are being held and polls anticipate an almost identical scenario: victory for the Popular Party, without an absolute majority, and a Vox in clear ascent, with real capacity to condition the next government
They are not two isolated situations, they are two chapters of the same phenomenon. The increasingly evident impression is that Vox is looking at Aragon before making a definitive move in Extremadura. It is not a conspiratorial intuition, it is an elementary political logic: to measure forces, consolidate position and negotiate from a position of maximum advantage.
If Aragón confirms the boom that polls predict, Vox will arrive at the Extremaduran table with a clear message: we are not only necessary, we are essential. And this forces us to ask an uncomfortable but necessary question: how did we get here?
Because the explanation is not solely in Vox, it is above all in the actions of the two major parties that have governed Spain for decades. The Popular Party has an evident responsibility. For years it has opted for a strategy that seemed pragmatic, but which has proven profoundly short-sighted
The PP has decided to mimic Vox on too many occasions
And it is that of competing with the far-right by assuming part of its discourse instead of marking distance, the PP has decided to mimic itself on too many occasions with the frameworks of Vox. Hardening of language, simplification of complex debates, constant appeals to identities and fears. The idea was clear: to recover lost voters to the right.The effect has been the opposite. By adopting that discourse, the PP has not weakened Vox, it has legitimized it, it has turned what was previously marginal into a politically normalized option. Today, when the PP is surprised or says it is surprised by Vox's demands in Extremadura, it would be advisable to remember that no one demands what they do not believe they deserve. And Vox believes it deserves it because for years it has been sent the message that its approaches were, at least in part, acceptable
But it would be a mistake to place all the responsibility on the Popular Party. The PSOE has also played a decisive role in this scenario, although from a different logic. Its systematic commitment to polarization has ended up having profoundly counterproductive effects.
Turn every political cycle into a permanent moral confrontation. Divide the country into irreconcilable blocs. Elevate any disagreement to the rank of a democratic threat. All of that mobilizes one's own, yes, but it also feeds the vote of rejection.
When politics becomes a state of constant tension, there are citizens who do not seek a more radical ideology, but an escape from weariness. And in that climate, the far-right finds fertile ground. Not a few voters who at one time identified with the PSOE have ended up landing in Vox. Not out of doctrinal conviction, undoubtedly, but out of disaffection, out of tiredness, out of rejection of a politics based on constant noise and pointing fingers
The PSOE has also played a decisive role in this scenario, although from a different logic. Its systematic commitment to polarization has ended up having profoundly counterproductive effects
The result of these two strategies, mimetism on the one hand and polarization on the other, is the same: a strong, organized far-right with the capacity to influence governments.
Extremadura is today the laboratory. Aragon can be the confirmation, and what is worrying is not only whether there will be a pact or not, but what is being lost along the way. Because when the central parties renounce being so, when they abandon the space of reasonable consensus, someone occupies that void. And that someone is almost always the extreme. Vox is not improvising, it is waiting, observing, measuring times and territories. It knows that others have stretched the rope before and that now it only has to decide how far it wants to tighten.Extremadura and Aragon are not exceptions, they are symptoms of a policy that has confused strategy with identity and tactics with a country project. And when that happens, the extremes stop being anecdotal and start setting the course