Podemos, VOX and Ciudadanos – Spanish European Election Campaigns in Times of Crisis

Abstract

The concept of Europe and the European Union is constantly being renegotiated. Various crises have led to the European idea being questioned in recent years and eventually favoured the electoral success of populist parties. Their relationship to Europe is a complex one: on the one hand, the EU is suspected of belonging to the ‘elites’. On the other hand, participation in the European Parliament is presented as a necessary means of reform or dissolution from within, even if calls for such a dissolution have become quieter after the Brexit referendum. The European concept therefore has to be renegotiated again and again also from the populist perspective. The positions of the populists towards Europe presumably show cross-national and cross-ideological similarities. It can be assumed, however, that the national and ideological specifics also lead to substantial differences. From a linguistic point of view, these have not been researched closely enough. Spain appears to be a particularly instructive subject for contrastive studies: the country was hit hard by the banking crisis. The refugee crisis, though, had fewer effects. In contrast, Spain has to deal with the Catalonia crisis. It is also striking that the country could not look back on a notably extreme right wing party until 2013. The aim of the present contribution is a comparative study of the European election manifestos of the parties Podemos (radical left), Ciudadanos (centre) and VOX (radical right) – all of which show traits of populist movements – with regard to the conceptualisation of EUROPE and the EU.