Why do the young sing the ‘Cara al sol’?

CitadelOne in every four young people under 25 years old would vote for Vox right now in the general elections. This is according to the CIS, which in its latest survey translates into figures what is a growing trend that years ago had already manifested itself, even more strongly, in other European countries, such as France, Germany and Italy. The image of protesters nearing the age of majority singing the Cara al sol in front of those camped out in Madrid for the housing decrees has made this even more evident. Being punk now means being right-wing, confirm sociologists, who see in social media and in the precariousness of the labor and housing market the breeding ground for the radicalization and polarization of messages and the reactionary movement that is manifesting among the youth.

The philologist and former deputy Laura Camargo, author of the book Trumpismo discursivo, highlights the importance of the internet and social media to explain the expansion of the reactionary wave we are experiencing today. “It is an individualistic youth, who prefers authoritarian regimes and chooses to look to the past in the face of a lack of a future,” she comments. A generation formed by digital natives who spend many hours glued to their phones and who are victims of the “sectors of the extreme right that use social networks as social engineering laboratories” to radicalize them.

“They sell fear and threats, project uncertainties, scandalize and polarize, all through insults, shouting, lack of respect and a visceral and flashy language that the algorithm interprets as easy to position. This explains the ease with which their content goes viral,” remarks Camargo. For them, “migrants, feminists and, more recently, pensioners are the enemy. These groups are accused of a kind of extractivism of social aid that reduces the salaries and opportunities of the young people themselves.” But the real problem, says Laura Camargo, “is not so much that they vote for Vox, as the precariousness and lack of horizons they suffer, the anxiety to achieve a status they perceive as impossible, which is fertile ground for narratives of order and punishment and for models of efficient authoritarianism.”

The Menorcan sociologist Borja Pellejero believes that the 2008 economic crisis is the primary source of discontent that has led to the current situation. “The social benefits that were sold to us have not arrived, and problems that have worsened since then, such as housing, make young people very precarious,” he points out. It has been this “conjunction of social and economic difficulties motivated by left-wing governments that have not known how to resolve the situation that has caused young people to turn to the right,” says Pellejero. But he also adds another factor, quite visible since the migration crisis in Ceuta, “the discourse that people coming from abroad are stealing resources from those of us who are from here. And this faster, easier, and more permeable discourse enters much more than that of social inequalities.”

Franco and tourism

Historian Margalida Roig believes the root lies in the “totally misinformed discourses, the very biased views, and the lies” that fill the neo-Phalangist discourse on social media. It is the cause—she says—of images like those in Sol, with young people shouting ‘Vivas’ to Franco and Primo de Rivera as if they were heroes of an “ideal” past, which is now mixed with the housing problem. They repeat that at least under Franco we all had a home, when that is not the case. The population as a whole did not live during the Franco regime with better conditions than in the Transition, but the extreme right spreads this, while claiming a past that did not really exist”.

Roig believes that “young people and a good part of society look towards the extreme right because they have stopped believing in the welfare state. Distrust in institutions, the result of supposedly progressive pacts that have worsened people's living conditions, pushes them to believe that the others, the extreme right, might actually have the solution, and they accept their ideology”.

This narrative also extends, in the case of the Balearic Islands, to tourism. “The idea that with tourism Mallorca stopped being poor still resonates in many sectors, which argue that either we live off tourism or we will starve, when it did not even contribute that much to us at that time compared to the rest of the State,” she recalls. Even so, Margalida Roig believes that this sentiment “is a brake, a resistance, to the change of model we want in the Islands. In fact, the tourism monoculture that the Franco regime implanted has ended up being our condemnation”.

Young and without an apartment, but with Vox

Alejandro Llabrés, a 24-year-old from Es Castell, is a clear example of this. At just 21, he was the youth coordinator for Vox in Menorca and their candidate for the Senate, and although he left all his positions in the party a year ago, he remains willing to vote for the far-right group in the elections. "It is the best option at the national level to bring about a change that the PP, on its own, would not make," says Llabrés.

Like so many other young people his age, he lives with his parents "because apartment prices are prohibitive and the housing problem, like that of immigration, is out of control. To the thousands of families evicted or who cannot find housing, one must add the millions of immigrants who have arrived in recent years," he comments, adding data. "According to the INE, last year 409,000 immigrants entered, but only 94,000 houses were built. The figures – he concludes – say it all."

His recipe for solving the housing issue "does not involve magic decrees. This will not be fixed in two days, but by liberalizing land where construction is possible and streamlining bureaucracy. Right now, it can take years from the time developers risk investing until they obtain the permit to do so." And social housing "is also not the solution right now, since the stock of social housing in Europe accounts for 10% of the total and in Spain, only 3%."

So, in his view, the growing right-wing choice among the youth has to do with "discontent and rebellion. We have had hard years, with people becoming poorer and having nowhere to live. If problems keep growing and growing, who will you vote for? The usual ones or the new ones who come with different ideas? This is the key. We young people have had enough of old lying policies and giving handouts, and we are looking for a change. We want a job to pay for our own home and be able to live well."

Xim Todo, 29, president of the New Generations of the Popular Party in Menorca since 2022, also notes “more support” for his ideas among young people “because now everything is more complicated. Housing prices have gone up and salaries are not enough to either move out or become self-employed and start your own initiatives”. This means that “what is revolutionary among young people is no longer being on the left and wearing an anti-fascist t-shirt, because these things do not bear any fruit. What everyone wants nowadays is to have a home and be able to get by day to day”.

It is clear that the message that reaches young people is also important to be able to understand their reaction, “and social media is the most direct way. An Instagram reel or a TikTok has much more impact than a letter to the newspapers or a press release. If we want to correspond with them, parties must adapt and speak the same language as Generation Z”.

“Short and forceful messages through social media are what reach young people the most”, confirms the secretary general of the Socialist Youth of Menorca, Hendrik Reuter. And they are also the ones that mobilize, “because they give simple, unverified answers to complex problems that actually require an effort of identification and reflection”.

It is from these messages that the far right, for example, “identifies immigrants as enemies and claims the defense of Spain as its own, when this sentiment is not the exclusive heritage of any ideology. Loving Spain is not, precisely, loving its flag, but taking care of public services and ensuring that everyone can live with respect”.

Hendrik Reuter, 28, and a member of the JSE since 2019, is currently the legal advisor to the Alaior City Council. Therefore, he has a good job and has been living independently with his partner for six years. “In this sense, I can consider myself lucky, since my situation is rare”, he admits. Because in his environment he does “perceive a certain unease and uncertainty due to the frustrated expectations of many young people who have studied and see their life project blocked or delayed”.

The best way to combat this, understand, is not by voting for far-right options, “as manifested by a part of the youth that now makes more noise than the other. I feel sorry seeing images like the ones from these days at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, with young people singing the Cara al Sol and proclamations in favor of Franco when, surely, they are unaware that with the dictator you could neither divorce nor were you guaranteed a good part of the social and individual rights that today we consider basic”. And the fault, he acknowledges, “may also be of the left-wing formations, which we have not known how to transmit well enough or in the simple way that is demanded of us what these political options imply”.