ARCHIVED - Far right wing party takes Torre Pacheco by storm in general election voting

Vox polled over 38 per cent of the votes in Torre Pacheco, where a third of the population are immigrants

As the dust settles after the Spanish general election on Sunday, when far right wing party Vox received more votes in the Region of Murcia than any other, details which are emerging show the extent to which the popularity of the party has soared over the last 12 months or so in parts of the Costa Cálida.

One interesting fact to emerge is that while none of Spain’s 16 other regions registered anything like the 28 per cent share of the vote for Vox in Murcia, among the 45 municipalities of the Region the greatest level of support is to be found in Torre Pacheco. 38.02 per cent of those who cast a vote in Torre Pacheco on Sunday did so in favour of the group led by Santiago Abascal, which succeeded in having 52 MPs elected to the national Congress after more than doubling the total achieved at the previous election in April.

At the same time, by becoming the most supported party in the Region Vox broke the dominance of the PP and PSOE parties which had lasted for 42 years.

As for why Torre Pacheco should be such a hotbed of support for the ultra-right, the most obvious explanation is the large number of immigrants living in the municipality and a feeling of resentment against them among some of the Spanish population: Vox advocates a hard-line stance to limit immigration, associating the presence of north Africans and South Americans in Spain with increased rates of domestic violence and other crimes.

In the rest of the Region Vox led the vote count in 15 other municipalities, namely those of Abarán, Molina de Segura, las Torres de Cotillas, Cieza, Alguazas, Villanueva del Río Segura, Alcantarilla, Beniel, Alhama de Murcia, Totana, Fuente Álamo, Mazarrón, Cartagena, San Javier and San Pedro del Pinatar, again outdoing the PP and the PSOE. On the coast of the Mar Menor only Los Alcázares resisted the surge of popular support towards Vox, with voters in Cartagena, San Pedro del Pinatar and San Javier all lurching further to the right of the political spectrum.

These analyses must be taken for what they are, a snapshot of voting preferences at a time when the issue of Catalan separatism is again dominating the national headlines (a topic on which Vox also advocate a firm line, to the extent of re-centralizing government throughout the whole of Spain). Nonetheless, it is hard to resist drawing conclusions regarding what might be the outcome of the regional and local elections had they been held at the end of this year, rather than in May…

Image: leading members of Vox in the city of Murcia on election night

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