Living on the edge: Spanish Greens in the mid-1990s

Abstract

Like their opposite numbers in other European states, the Spanish greens have tended to fare very badly in state elections. In the most recent (1996) general election, the green parties stood on their own platform and secured more than 0.5% in only one of Spain's 17 electoral regions. In most others, they scored so poorly that their vote was not even recorded in official statistics. In recent years the greens have taken steps towards achieving greater political power by building alliances with centre-left parties, but at the cost of compromising their own principles and beliefs. This paper discusses some of the other 'external' obstacles impeding their progress into the political mainstream. The author argues that the future for green parties in Spain remains extremely bleak, even if internal philosophical wrangles were satisfactorily resolved. Only when the country becomes more integrated into the European Union and its political culture becomes more like that of other Member States will the Spanish political system becomes receptive to green political ideas.