Gorka Maneiro warns: far-left violence possible if PP and Vox win in Spain

Gorka Maneiro argues in Vozpópuli that an electoral victory for PP and Vox could lead to street violence by the far left, and calls on democratic parties to unite against the violent.

The columnist **Gorka Maneiro** has signed an article in **Vozpópuli** in which he confesses his pessimism about what may happen after the next general election, scheduled for **29 November**. His central thesis is that if the **PP** of **Alberto Núñez Feijóo** and **Vox**, the party of **Santiago Abascal**, win enough seats to govern, there is a risk that the most violent far left will not accept the result and will take its rejection to the streets. It is not a prediction, he insists, but a warning meant to prevent it from happening.

## The starting point: bringing down Sánchez as the goal

Maneiro starts from a premise he considers shared by most of the electorate: the **PSOE** of **Pedro Sánchez** will suffer an electoral drubbing. He attributes it to the party's organic weakness, its governing record, what he calls its ideological «podemización» (a drift toward Podemos-style politics) and its accumulated strategic errors. He cites polls as a thermometer, though he dismisses those from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Spain's official polling institute) led by **José Félix Tezanos** and the forecasts of consultant **Iván Redondo**, whom he accuses of putting his own track record ahead of accuracy.

For the columnist, the unavoidable goal is Sánchez's departure from Moncloa (the prime minister's official residence). He believes his eight years in government have shown a tendency to bypass democratic procedures, occupy institutions that should be neutral and pressure the judiciary. That is why he asks readers not to be too picky about the alternatives: first, stop the man he sees as a danger to democracy; then, judge those who come after by their actions.

## The antiestéticar that defeat will not be accepted

The core of the article is the scenario after election day. Maneiro takes it as given that Sánchez will suffer a «shellacking», that Vox will rise and that the PP will govern with Abascal's support. So far, the predictable script. The problem arises when he asks what the far left will do if that result comes to pass. If for years it has been claimed that the right cannot be a governing alternative because it is fascism, he reasons, then whoever wins will lack legitimacy in the eyes of that part of the electorate.

Hence his uncomfortable question: if what is coming is considered a totalitarian aberration, what will stop some from moving from words to deeds? Maneiro does not point to any specific group nor provides data on incidents, but he warns that extreme street violence is a real risk if the electoral numbers do not strip the violent of their supposed justifications. He does, however, reject the vote-rigging hypothesis he attributes to feverish minds: an electoral coup d'état in Spain, he recalls, would land whoever attempted it in prison.

## The responsibility of those who stoke discord

The columnist widens his view beyond the violent themselves. He is worried that some of those who should be defending democracy have spent too long «throwing fire» and setting coexistence ablaze. He names no names, but places that responsibility in the political discourse that legitimizes the idea that the adversary is an enemy who must be stopped by any means. That rhetoric, he argues, is the breeding ground for the violence he antiestéticars.

His prescription is twofold. First, those who threaten violence must stop doing so. Second, those who justify it in subtle ways must state clearly that it is unacceptable. He sees the unity of democratic parties against the violent as the most effective dam. And he adds a preventive argument: imagining that violence could occur is a way of taking measures to prevent it. It is not about being a killjoy, he says, but about warning those at sea.

## A warning, not a prophecy

Maneiro closes his piece insisting that he does not take it as given that the violence will happen. His intention is the opposite: to point it out so that it does not occur. He acknowledges that the scenario depends on PP and Vox winning enough seats to govern, something the polls suggest but only the ballot boxes will confirm on **29 November**. And he leaves a final warning: if in the end what only a few desire comes to pass, it will be because those who could have stopped it did not.

The article is published in a context of high political polarization in Spain, with a PSOE governing in a minority and an opposition demanding elections. Maneiro's thesis is not a technical diagnosis or a poll, but a signed opinion that should be read as such. Anyone quoting it must attribute it to its author and outlet, not present it as a proven fact.