This summer’s European Parliament elections are a test for the radical right across the continent – but in Spain, the outcome could determine the future of the country’s main far-right party, Vox.

Despite the rise of the far right throughout Europe, Vox haemorrhaged 600,000 votes in Spain’s last general election, and the country’s mainstream right-wingers are trying to keep up the pressure. 

In Madrid, members of Spain’s longstanding conservative Popular Party (PP) are conducting a membership drive, calling on voters to join the “Ayuso Team.”

The phrase refers to Isabel Díaz Ayuso, one of the PP’s most popular leaders and President of the Community of Madrid. She won the presidency in the regional elections in 2019, in a campaign that made her the first conservative leader to curb Vox’s rise.

Ayuso has managed to snatch thousands of votes from the far-right party by adopting such narratives as the defence of economic freedom, like Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, and the defence of the unity of Spain in the face of regional separatism.

She has also waged a cultural battle against leftist parties, a strategy that caters to Vox’s conservative target voters.

“I am convinced that the Vox voter has the same concerns and tastes as I do,” said PP member Luis Monedero. “So if he wants his demands to be carried out, he should cast a strategic vote and really vote for the party that will take them and implement them in the European Parliament.”

“President Ayuso has been fighting the battle of ideas from the very beginning, which are not necessarily right-wing ideas,” explains PP member Ignacio Dancausa. “People have realised that the left has turned that exclusionary radical feminism into an industry, they have turned that absurd environmentalism into an industry as well.”

Andrés Santana, Professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid, told Euronews that “Vox will need more than just attracting disenchanted voters. They will have to show that their vote is really more attractive to those voters who once left the PP.”

However, there is a gap between Ayuso’s muscular discourse and the more moderate positions of the PP’s national leader, Alberto Núñez Feijoo. The party faces a serious challenge as it tries to attract Vox voters without alienating centre-right voters.

And Vox has not had its last word. For one thing, the recent farmers’ protests sweeping across Europe could boost the party in this summer’s continent-wide elections.

It withstood the PP’s onslaught in recent Basque regional elections – and however successful the PP’s efforts to monopolise the mainstream vote, is expected that the party will at least improve on its showing in the 2019 European elections and finally consolidate itself as Spain’s third political force.

EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on Monday to expand existing sanctions on Iranian drones to include missiles and their potential transfer to proxies such as Russia, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg.

Thousands of Indigenous people began gathering in Brazil’s capital on Monday for what was expected to become a protest against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s unfulfilled promises to create reserves and expel illegal miners and land-grabbers from their territories.

Holding Lula’s government to account appeared to be the focus of this year’s 20th Free Land Camp, an annual weeklong encampment of Indigenous people in Brasilia.

CONSERVATIVE BRAZILIANS LAUD ELON MUSK AT RALLY IN SUPPORT OF BOLSONARO

Last week, Lula created two new reserves instead of the six his government had promised for this year. During the announcement, he acknowledged that “some of our friends” would be frustrated.

Lula said the delay was at the behest of state governors and that it was necessary to find new areas for about 800 non-Indigenous peoples who would eventually be displaced upon defining the new reserves.

“Enough of lawful genocide! Our rights cannot be negotiated, and no one can take Indigenous rights out of the Constitution,” read an open letter from Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation, the country’s main Indigenous organization, published Monday. The letter was addressed to the legislative, judicial and executive branches of Brazil’s government.

At least 251 territories have pending claims for recognition before the federal government, according to non-profit Socio-Environmental Institute.

“We are very disappointed with this government. We know it has many enemies, and the Congress is one common enemy”, Alessandra Korap, an Indigenous leader of the Munduruku tribe, told The Associated Press. “But we didn’t expect it to demarcate only two lands this year.”

Lula took office in 2023 pledging to resume granting lands to Indigenous peoples, a stark contrast to his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to create a single centimeter of additional Indigenous land. However, Indigenous demands face mounting opposition from the powerful agribusiness sector, which has the support of hundreds of seats in Congress and several governors across the country.

Protest organizers said about 8,000 people have so far come to Brasilia this year. They’ve set up hundreds of tents on the main esplanade. Some endured a three-day long bus trip. Activities in the camp include traditional dances, the selling of handicrafts, debates and political demonstrations.

Many more protesters were expected to come throughout the week.