Extreme-Right in Portugal and Spain: Between Legacy and Rebirth

Abstract

[EN] The 2019 legislative elections meant the return of the extreme-right to the parliaments of Portugal and Spain. The arrival of Chega and Vox in their respective parliaments put an end to the immunity of the Iberian Peninsula in relation to extreme-right political parties. This structural change in both political systems raised the scientific need to revisit the entire path of the extreme-right in the democratic period. To understand why the capacity of the extreme-right has returned decades later, we revisit the Portuguese and Spanish democratic transitions through a comparative historical analysis in order to decipher the exogenous and endogenous legacy left by the transitions on the extreme-right. After analysing the influence of the democratic transitions on the inability verified on the extreme-right for decades, we decipher the endogenous and exogenous changes that boosted Chega and Vox, with different strength, as parliamentary forces.