Far right harvests votes as climate rules roil rural Spain

Standing by a barn brimming with hundreds of bleating sheep, Jesus del Socorro Cuevas leads the far right's charge against "dictatorial" EU environmental regulation in his corner of rural Spain. "The enlightened gentlemen of Europe are always coming up with new things," thundered Socorro Cuevas, 63, a long-time farmer who is the far-right Vox party's agriculture councillor in the central municipality of Socuellamos. “A farmer cannot dedicate himself to agriculture," he told AFP as tractors rumbled past and dogs snoozed on the ground at a party supporter's farm. "You have to tell them what you do every day, what you prune, if you collect the vine shoots, if you plough, if you fertilise... freedom no longer exists."

The third-largest party in Spain's hung parliament, Vox has made the battle against "climate fanaticism" a rallying cry in a bid to harvest rural votes from mainstream parties. Its climate-sceptic campaigning mirrors that of like-minded formations across Europe as the issue of climate change splits along right-left lines. Spain sweltered through its hottest summer on record this year, an example of the extreme weather that scientists say human-driven climate change is exacerbating. The European Union's Green Deal, a flagship law legally binding the bloc to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, is the main target of Vox's scorn.

"Globalist policies" such as the Green Deal and the 2015 Paris climate agreement "strangle our agricultural system", said Ricardo Chamorro, a Vox MP who sits on the Spanish parliament's agriculture committee.

Rodrigo Alonso, Vox's national spokesman for work and agriculture, said the strict requirements of the Green Deal were causing European-grown goods to be displaced by ones made outside the bloc using cheaper labour and laxer environmental standards.

"Principles of EU preference are not respected, the single market is not respected," he added, denouncing "unfair competition".

Mass protests by farmers shook Europe last year over environmental constraints and non-EU imports which producers say undercut them and flout the climate and animal welfare rules they must meet.

Buoyed by the discontent, far-right parties like Vox made gains at subsequent European Parliament elections.

Clad in blue overalls, farmer Julio Torremocha Marchante said he used to back Spain's main conservative Popular Party (PP) but switched to Vox around 10 years ago. He recounted how, faced with extra bureaucratic and financial burdens, he gave up on organic agriculture, saying activity "was going elsewhere" amid competition from larger farms. "Family businesses in the livestock sector will disappear," the 61-year-old told AFP on his modest holding of around 400 sheep and 16 hectares (39 acres) of vineyard.

The central Castilla-La Mancha region to which it belongs is the land of literary lore — immortalised by Miguel de Cervantes's 17th-century novel Don Quixote, about an idealistic knight roaming the area's flat expanses. But a prosaic reality has replaced the poetic chivalry of yore for so-called "empty Spain" — places such as Socuellamos, where around 12,000 people live. These vast but sparsely populated regions suffer demographic decline and depend heavily on agriculture.

"Vox has always had a discourse that has tried to over-represent the needs of the rural world," according to Javier Lorente Fontaneda, a politics expert and professor at Madrid's King Juan Carlos University.

Historically conservative rural areas have provided fertile terrain for its growth, while in the short term it has exploited a "protest vote" spurred by "discontent about depopulation, the lack of opportunities", he explained. Even as the EU supports farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy, they "feel very overwhelmed and heavily scrutinised" by the bloc, he added. "And Vox is the only party in Spain that is truly critical of the European Union."

In a sign of Vox's inroads, the left-leaning UPA farming union warned the Green Deal was being "targeted by major disinformation campaigns that have intoxicated the professionals of the primary sector". Miguel Bravo Ruiz, another farmer in Castilla-La Mancha, does not vote for Vox but understands why some of his peers have.

"Vox up to now is the only party helping us, at least in word," the 60-year-old told AFP by telephone. Vox has wielded power at local and regional level, usually in coalition with the PP, as in Socuellamos town hall. Some polls have put it close to 20 per cent of the vote, making it a potential kingmaker if the next election scheduled for 2027 yields another hung parliament. "There is scepticism and I think that is bringing us many votes," MP Chamorro said. "The working classes and the people in the villages increasingly view Vox with sympathy."