It would be a mistake to downplay the importance of the Torre Pacheco disturbances and look at them as something specific that happens in a town in Murcia. We must link this outbreak of racist violence in the streets with the results of the latest CIS barometer, which showed a clear upward trend for Vox, compared to a PSOE that is retreating and a PP that is not advancing, despite its laxative daily rant about corruption, real or invented (the distinction between true and false information is becoming increasingly tenuous), of the current government.
The far right thrives on populism, but it goes far beyond the dose of populism typically found in standard political discourse. The far right's goal is to promote social discord and civic confrontation between groups of people who are incited to feel like enemies of one another. If they can create tension and even violence in the streets, all the better, because it's the most powerful way they can present the supposed war they claim is being waged. This is prime Trumpism, and it applies to Vox in Spain and also to the Catalan Alliance in Catalonia. Ciudadanos spent their miserable existence trying to stir up that violence, without quite achieving it. Now Vox believes it has achieved its first success in Torre Pacheco, and they feel strong. Abascal warns that this is only the beginning and makes openly disregarded calls for violence against immigrants this summer at the town festivals. Media outlets sympathetic to him and creators of toxic content on social media are amplifying it at a hellish pace, with fake news and videos of attacks against older people allegedly committed by immigrants. Racist rhetoric is rife and widely accepted socially, especially among young people.
The key word is substitutionAccording to the far right and fascism, the arrival of immigrants is part of an invasion plan (of Spain, Catalonia, Mallorca, it doesn't matter) that will lead to the replacement of Western culture with another, almost always Islamic. To this idea, Vox and some sectors of the PP now counter this idea with the idea of the Reconquista (they write it in capital letters), a word they like because it sounds patriotic and reminds us of Don Pelayo, and which is meant to signify the recovery of Spain for true Spaniards. Exactly the same now as in July 1936. Vox benefits from the discrediting of politics, but above all from the fact that the PP has them as partners in several regional governments and is fully willing (although they try to hide it) to negotiate with them on their arrival at the Moncloa Palace. To put it mildly, it's pointless for spokesperson Borja Sémper to condemn Vox's role in Torre Pacheco (symbolically, on the same day he announces his cancer status), if on the same day the brand-new secretary general, Miguel Tellado, as fit as a fiddle, claims that Vox is a much more loyal party in Spain than the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), even though the latter is the main reason for the confrontation. Above all, that's the point.
