As the election approaches, a disquieting perception is making its way into the collective consciousness. This is not the usual electoral noise, characterized by the exchange of empty reproaches and quick-consumption slogans. It is something denser, an undercurrent that seems to alter the very temperature of our coexistence. Darkness, in the form of a radical and reactionary political proposal, is no longer just a laboratory hypothesis peeking over the normative horizon, but threatens to occupy the nerve center of the State.
The phenomenon compels an exercise in lucidity that goes beyond mere lament and analyzes the material implications of this shift and the reasons for our own vulnerability.
To gauge the depth of the abyss in view, it is advisable to shed prejudices and rigorously break down the two models of society that are being measured at this crossroads. The far-right's proposal does not represent a simple alternation of government, but an impeachment of the foundational consensus upon which this country's modernity has been built.
In the economic sphere, the reactionary project walks a dangerous duality. On the one hand, it champions aggressive fiscal deregulation, promising tax cuts that, under the guise of general relief, actually disarm the State's redistributive capacity and disproportionately benefit the highest incomes. On the other hand, this asphyxiation of public revenue inevitably translates into the dismantling of essential services. The introduction of market dynamics into healthcare and education (formulas like school vouchers or service outsourcing) does not seek efficiency, but segregation. It transforms citizens' rights into consumer goods accessible only to those who can afford them, shattering the pact of intergenerational solidarity. In contrast, the model of resistance, though timid, upholds the need for an interventionist State that regulates market excesses, guarantees the purchasing power of pensions, and uses progressive taxation as the only dike against structural inequality.
The setback is even more severe when examining social architecture and civil rights. The radical right's agenda places the cultural battle as its main vector of mobilization. What is proposed is not a mere legislative reform, but the demolition of the pillars of equality: the repeal of laws against gender-based violence, the questioning of rights won by the LGTBIQ+ community, and the deliberate erasure of democratic memory. This model seeks to impose an exclusionary identity homogeneity, where immigration is criminalized and used as a scapegoat for contemporary anxieties, returning the country to a monolithic and authoritarian conception of coexistence. On the opposite side, the progressive project defends an open, pluralistic, and secular society, where the expansion of civil rights (such as euthanasia or the protection of reproductive health) is understood as an indicator of human progress and democratic maturity.
Finally, the territorial structure of the State faces an institutional head-on collision. The far-right advocates for a nineteenth-century centralism that proposes the recentralization of crucial competencies such as Education and Healthcare, and even goes so far as to suggest the outlawing of regionalist or independence-leaning political parties. This punitive vision ignores the rich complexity of our plurinational reality and blows up the State of Autonomies, a model that, with all its imperfections, has allowed the territory to be structured from respect for its diversity. The maintenance of this framework, defended by the forces that today support co-governance, is presented as the only viable path if a social fracture with unpredictable consequences is to be avoided.
However, a quality analysis that aims to be honest cannot stop at denouncing the adversary. It would be unforgivable blindness, an exercise in sterile self-satisfaction, to attribute the growth of these regressive currents solely to media manipulation or the intrinsic malice of their voters. The advance of the darkness is, to a large extent, the result of the voids left by those who had the obligation to be the light.
The PSOE and the different spaces of the transformative left bear an unavoidable responsibility in the gestation of this crisis. During years of institutional management, the governing left has too often slid into a sort of technocracy disconnected from the ground trodden by the popular classes. Much politics of gestures and grandiloquent speeches have been made while the daily lives of the majorities continued to be marked by uncertainty. The inability to address the bleeding problem of housing at its root, the tolerance of endemic job insecurity that condemns young people to an eternal present without a tomorrow, and the suffocating bureaucracy that turns access to social aid into a humiliating obstacle course, have been undermining citizens' trust in democratic institutions.
The left has neglected political pedagogy and has replaced the construction of a horizon of material certainties with cryptic language, more attentive to internal party disputes than to the social pain of households struggling to balance the family budget. When institutional politics is perceived as a theater of elites incapable of mitigating material helplessness, people's legitimate rage and fear become available. It is on this ground of frustration that the far-right sows its promises of false order, community security, and nostalgia for a mythical past. Darkness advances because the alternative has become predictable, gray, and, at times, cowardly.
We are not facing a fatal and irreversible destiny, but a moment of historical decision. The forces of reaction advance precisely because they feed on apathy and disillusionment. Citizen awareness cannot be born from blind fear of what is to come, but from the rigorous demand for what we owe ourselves. It is time to activate material memory and understand that democracy is a fragile construction that requires constant defense and real content.
Darkness does not possess its own consistency. It is not a solid body that progresses by the force of its own nature, but by the projected shadow that occupies the space where light has renounced to shine. Activating collective consciousness requires understanding that gloom only recedes when politics reignites the flame of material certainty and mutual respect, reminding us that the future is not endured, it is conquered.
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