Una, Grande y Libre: How Historical Memory Attitudes Shape the Support for Vox

Since 2018, with the arrival of Vox to the parliamentary arena, the active political use of history in Spain has extended to the right. Calls to forget the past and seek concord coexist in the discourse of this populist radical right party with constant references to history, and to the left as the culprit of the Spanish Civil War. Recent elections show that references to the past and attacks on the existing “Memory laws” have become increasingly central to Vox’s identity. Using original individual-level survey data from the POLMEMO project, we show that this is also true from the demand side, with attitudes towards the past becoming key determinants of electoral support for Vox in general (and to a lesser degree vis-à-vis voting for the Popular Party). Moreover, our findings suggest that attitudes towards the Spanish troubled past seem to be closely linked to a nationalist preference for centralization of power. Hence, we show that not only does history matter for explaining support for radical right parties, but that it also exerts and indirect effect through contemporary salient issues for this type of parties.