Following his defeat in Parliament, which rejected his national budget proposal, SpanishPrime Minister Pedro Sánchez had no recourse other than convening general elections for April 28th, a high risk contest since the extreme right wing VOX political party could become the deciding force in the electoral dispute.

Sanchez became head of the Government not by the majority in a national election but due to the censure vote that toppled the administration of Mariano Rajoy.  No one in Spain expects that such political formation will obtain the majority in the general elections scheduled for next May, and it is expected that Sanchez will try to forge a coalition that would confirm him in power.

However, the Spanish political panorama is swinging to the right, just as in other European nations, and that trend was confirmed in Andalucia, in Southern Spain, when the extreme right dethroned the leftist Socialist Workers Party from the regional government.

In the recent elections in that Spanish region, the ultraconservative VOX obtained eleven percent of the votes, which allowed it to join in a coalition with other right wing parties and expel the leftist Spanish Socialist Workers Party from the Government.

VOX belongs to a nationalist, xenophobic and racist political trend that has been spreading over Europe under the leadership of a US citizen,  Steve Bannon, who works for the installation of that ideology in the European Parliament, a body that will hold elections just one month after the voting in Spain. This extremist political formation poses a very, very serious threat not only for Europe but also for the rest of the world.

Even though it is not yet strong enough to fully control the Spanish Government, it could gain enough votes to ally itself in Parliament with the right wing Popular Party and other right wing independents and expel the current Spanish Administration from the Government.   This organization maintains close ties with President Donald Trump and with the right-wing President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, as well as with right-wing groups in Italy and Germany.

VOX is feeding in the disenchantment of the population with traditionalist politicians and with the consequences of the rising cost of living, corruption and the increase in poverty standards, affecting a quickly growing segment of the Western European population.

One of the right wing tricks is to spread the idea among the population that the cause of its problems lies in the immigration that flows from Africa and other regions and in the assignation of resources to ameliorate the tragic situation of sectors damaged  by the crisis.        

Pedro Sanchez has chosen the worst time to convene anticipated elections because his party lacks enough strength to rule by itself and has just broken its alliance with the Catalonian independentists, a move that will bring it serious damage in the next elections.

The immediate future will bring intense inter-party negotiations that will have to be closely followed because a new issue, that of Venezuela, will join the respective political agendas in the different nations and will also be an important issue in the European Parliamentary elections.