The blurred lines between center-right and far-right: “Reverse contamination” and the People’s Party’s environmentalism in Spain

Abstract

Scholars have recently focused on the eco-nationalist “turn” of the far-right right parties in Europe and their obstruction of a substantive environmental agenda. However, we argue that the analysis of the far-right eco-nationalism must be broadened to include certain established and impactful centre-right European parties. By focusing on the single case-study of the centre-right People’s Party (PP) in Spain, we argue that it has articulated Manichean, negationist, anti-elitist, and conspirative discursive elements typical of the far-right eco-nationalism before the emergence of Vox, the Spanish far-right party. In actuality, starting with 2019, Vox adopted and developed an eco-nationalist narrative advanced first at the “centre” by the ex-Prime Minister José María Aznar and still influential today at the level of PP’s leadership, namely a narrative framing ecology as “the new communism” and the (global) progressive elites and “consensus” as threatening the free Spanish nation and “freedom” worldwide.