Reconquest 2.0: Spanish Right-Wing Populism and National Historical Narrative during the 2019 Spanish and European Elections

Right wing populist parties are usually seen as putting forward an exclusivist image of the national community. In order to do so, they mobilise particular narratives that glorify past epoques and put forward an idea of a national community that needs to be preserved: from mentions of the Viking era in Nordic populism to uses of the Knights Templar in UK parties. However, how does running in a European election affect these narratives? In what way do these representations of the national community change when the campaign needs to also put forward a programme in relation to the European Union? In this paper we tackle these issues through an examination of the mobilisation of historical narratives in one of the newest populist parties in Europe: Spain’s VOX. We will collect Twitter data on the account @Vox_es over a period of 8 months (February-August 2019). This period covers the elections to the European parliament as well as two non-electoral periods (February-April and June-August). We will analyse this data by employing a mixed-method approach- a combination of social network analysis and discourse analysis methods. The study aims to reconstruct both how Vox_es’ ideas of the Spanish national community change with regards to the European elections and how users engage with this controversial historical narrative.