Today it's the national elections in Spain and there's a strong possibility that there are going to be outright fascists in Spain's government for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975.
The current government is comprised of PSOE, which is like the Spanish Labour Party, supported by the minor left-wing Podemos party.
They're unpopular because of a number of things, like the lockdown, and the inflation crisis.
Interestingly they've done a really good job of reducing inflation compared to other European countries, thanks to a load of direct market interventions.
They capped energy prices and imposed windfall taxes on energy company profits.
When petrol and diesel prices soared to record highs they implemented price discounts at the pumps.
They've made public transport free in local communities across the country.
They abolished VAT on staple food products to help bring down food price inflation.
And rent controls prevented greedy landlords from cynically using inflation as an excuse to jack up rents.
These measures resulted in Spain registering the lowest rate of inflation of the major Eurozone economies, but unfortunately people don't tend to compare what's going on in their own country with conditions in other countries, so the Sánchez government is still not popular, despite their relative success.
The Spanish version of the Tory party, PP, has been leading the polls, despite being mired in corruption the last time they were in power. However they're nowhere near popular enough to form a government on their own, which means they'd have to rely on a coalition with the extreme-right Vox party to form a government, because it's extremely unlikely that they'd find support for their hard-right agenda elsewhere.
PP were bad enough last time they were in power, imposing ruinous austerity cuts, lavishing handouts on the mega-rich, imposing draconian new anti-protest laws, attacking women's reproductive rights, and reeling from one massive corruption scandal to the next.
If they end up sharing power with the the extreme-right, it will clearly embolden their most extreme instincts, and this won't just mean destruction of all the successful anti-inflation measures, it'll mean women, Spain's significant immigrant population, LGBT people, Spain's various regional nationalities (Catalans, Basques, Valencianos ...), and the political left will be in real danger of persecution.
Over the last few weeks the polls have tightened, meaning there's a small possibility of PSOE, the left-wing coalition of Sumar, and several regional parties forming a "Rainbow Coalition" in order to keep the extreme-right fanatics out of power.
So there's a small possibility that Spain could avoid a return to having outright fascists in their government, however just a few weeks ago it seemed like an impossibility.
Let's hope they don't allow a bunch of frothing extreme-right fanatics into their government ...
so it all depends on Junts now. Junts want a Scottish-stye IND ref for Catalonia which they’re NOT going to get.. so god knows what he can offer them