BARCELONA, Spain Nearly 45 years after Spains fascist dictator Francisco Franco died and this country transitioned to democracy, a resurgent far-right movement is once again on the march.

Just look at the past few weeks.

Days after Spain swore in a new left-wing government this month, far-right leader Santiago Abascal declared a war without a barracks in the Parliament, courts and streets of Europes fifth-largest economy.

Bombastic rhetoric quickly manifested into action. Two weeks ago, his ultra-nationalist Vox party marched thousands through Spanish cities, denouncing Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Snchez as a traitor to the nation. This past week, his lawmakers wrangled new provisions allowing parents to yank children from public school lectures that teach sexual safety and understanding of the LGBTQ community, which Abascal derided as the corruption of minors with erotic games.

Far-right movements have spread across the developed world over the past decade as voters angered over income inequality, decaying social services and increasing chaos from conflicts and climate disasters have sought easy answers in age-old social divisions. Its a sign of the movements expanding reach that the moves here in Spain came within days of a march by gun-toting extremists in Richmond, Virginia, and an announcement by Frances far-right leader Marine Le Pen that she will run again for president.

Yet the increasing visibility of the Spanish far-right marks a jolting escalation for a country whose recent memory of fascist brutality seemed for years to inoculate its voters against the bigotry-fueled populism seducing other parts of the West.

While an economic malaise appears to have made Spain fertile ground for the far-right, experts say lingering tension over the Catalonia regions failed 2017 vote for independence created a historic opening the party has handily exploited.

Now Vox looks poised to spark a culture war, political scientists say, rooted in nostalgia for the regime behind what some historians call the Spanish Holocaust a state-sanctioned campaign of terror against leftist dissidents, workers and LGBTQ minorities that left upward of 200,000 dead and 400,000 languishing in prisons and concentration camps.

Theres a government that wants to revitalize old hatreds, Abascal said of Snchez in a recent interview with Spanish broadcaster Antena3. Theres nothing sadder than that.

Fueled By Hatred Of Separatists

Vox, established in late 2013, first gained a toehold in December 2018, when the upstart party won a dozen seats in the local parliament of Andalucia, Spains largest region. The victories sent what The Guardian called a shockwave through Spanish politics and showed, according to the Financial Times , that Spain was no longer immune to the far-right.

The conservative Popular party and the liberal, pro-business Citizens party courted Vox in a bid to form a coalition government, giving the extreme right its first taste of power since the end of the Franco era.

In the next two national elections, Vox strengthened. In an April vote, Vox surged from zero to 24 seats in the national Parliament. Novembers most recent election raised that total to 52, making Vox the third-largest party in Spain.