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Workers' Front (Spain)

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Not to be confused with Frente Obrero (Nicaragua) and the Workers' Front of Catalonia.
Workers' Front
Frente Obrero
AbbreviationFO
LeaderRoberto Vaquero
FoundedOctober 2018
Registered13 March 2019
HeadquartersCalle Gascó Oliag 6, PTA 42. 46010 Valencia
NewspaperUNIÓN
Ideology
Political positionLeft-wing[A]
Congress of Deputies
0 / 350
Senate
0 / 265
European Parliament
0 / 61
Local seats
1 / 67,152
Website
https://frenteobrero.es/
^ A: The party argues that "the left-right dichotomy is no longer valid."[6] However, it has been described as left-wing by the international media,[7] regional media,[8] as well as political scientists.[9]

Workers' Front (Spanish: Frente Obrero, FO) is a left-wing[7][8][9] Spanish political party founded as a mass organization by the anti-revisionist party PML (RC) in October 2018 and registered as a separate political party in March 2019. As of 2024, it is headed by Roberto Vaquero.

History[edit]

The Workers' Front was established on October 14, 2018 at the Ateneo de Madrid as a front organization of the PML(RC).[10] Subsequently, the Workers' Front expanded to several cities in Spain, such as La Coruña, León, Ponferrada, Zaragoza, and Cádiz.[11]

In 2021, the party participated in Okupas, a Spanish squatting movement. Frente Obrero occupied a prestigous builing in Mercado de Colón district in Valencia. It organized a food bank and the homeless shelter in the building, attacking the local government for not helping over 1000 homeless people in Valencia. The party also hung the flag of the Second Spanish Republic on the building.[12]

On June 12, 2022, their first congress was held. During the congress the decision to become a political party was approved by the members. Representatives from other organizations, such as the Polisario Front, spoke during the congress.[13]

In late 2023, the group announced they would be participating in the 2023 Spanish protests against the PSOE government.[14]

Since then, they, and especially their leader, Roberto Vaquero, have gained presence in social media and even national televisions in Spain, participating in debates on current political issues in programs such as Horizonte, on channel Cuatro.[15]

Ideology[edit]

Frente Obrero has been described as a party that describes Marxism-Leninism with conservative stances on social and cultural issues.[2] It has also been described as Stalinist.[16] However, despite being strongly connected with the PML(RC) and supporting far-left ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism, the FO is not explicitly communist. The party rejects the labels of political left and right, arguing that they "are two sides of the same coin".[6] However, it is considered left-wing by political commentators as well as political scientists.[7][8][9] The The European Conservative described the party as a representative of the "patriotic, pre-woke, pro-work left."[6]

In their program A Spain for the Workers, they defend national sovereignty, Hispanic identity, free university education, the nationalization of strategic economic sectors, energy sovereignty, nuclear energy, increasing the minimum wage, supporting the rural sector, promoting birth rates, creating more public housing, introducing rent control and limiting immigration.[17] The party also focuses on class struggle and a planned, communist economy. Frente Obrero also wants to preserve the "classical, Christian" culture of Spain, and supports Spanish republicanism.[18]

They oppose capitalism, the European Union, NATO, surrogacy, feminism, deindustrialization, queer theory, the Trans Law, affirmative action, islamization,[19] cosmopolitanism and political correctness.

The party opposes immigration, advocates strict border control and argues that the wages of Spanish workers are declining because of liberal immigration laws. However, the party also stresses that “immigrants are not to blame” and are “victims”, with the real culprit being “the capitalist system, which promotes this type of migration to exploit them and lower wages in Spain” and that “the most rancid right uses immigration to generate hatred and social confrontation”. Thus, the party recommends strict control of immigration, including the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants.[16]

Frente Obrero is heavily critical of socially progressive left-wing parties. The party accused Podemos of being "a pawn at the service of big business and banks", while arguing that Más País is "leaving the workers on the street". Frente Obrero argues that the mainstream left-wing parties of Spain alienated the workers and caused the rise of the far-right Vox by embracing neoliberal ecoomics as well as "gender ideology".[20]

The party also opposes the independence of Catalonia, arguing that the pro-independence Catalan parties "do not even represent independence" and instead have "fostered Islamisation and mass immigration in Catalonia". The party calls for Catalan voters to reject "Islamisation and the fictitious separatist process".[21] The party instead proposes to turn Spain into a federation.[6] It also supports Spanish ownership of Ceuta and Mellila, and decries Moroccan claim to these cities.[22]

Criticism[edit]

The party has been criticized by other leftist organizations as transphobic because of denying the gender ideology and the idea that the gender (especially being a woman) is only a "feeling".

Moreover, they have considered it reactionary and racist because of being strongly opossed to the increasing presence of islamic immigration not integrated into European societies (sometimes non-respectful with women's or LGBT's rignts, other times linked to higher crime rates than the native population, or with violent events motivated by religious fanaticism).

In addition, they have been compared (negatively) to the right-wing party Vox[23][24] because of some coincidences in the aforementioned ideas.

It has also been accused of giving credit to the Great Replacement theory, despite the fact that it is a logical consequence of the combination of the current European demography and the current migratory patterns.[25]

In 2023, FO was accused of having received money from the Algerian government by Euromagreb. This was later denied by the party.[26]

The party has been called "left-wing VOX" given its conservative stances on social issues, such as its opposition to immigration, LGBT and feminism, as well as attacking the "islamization" of Spain and "gender ideology". However, Spanish political analyst Asier Balaguer Navarro rejects this claim, writing: "Yes, in the sense that many of its proposals, precisely those that coincide with the conservative party, have a lot of social resonance, and are easily assimilated by the electoral objective of the party; also yes, because of the confrontation with political correctness, defense of the unity of Spain or the rejection of the "woke laws". But that is where the similarities end. The Workers' Front is against the EU, it still has a communist base in which the public and the planned are a substantial part of its economic theories; it is openly republican, anti-NATO, secular..."[18]

Elections[edit]

The FO participated in elections for the first time in the 2023 Spanish local elections. They ran in Villalba de los Arcos, Santa Margalida, Mislata, and Mandayona, winning one seat in Mandayona.

Election results[edit]

2023 Spanish local elections
Municipality Votes % Seats
Villalba de los Arcos 27 7.6% 0
Santa Margalida 100 1.8% 0
Mislata 255 1.1% 0
Mandayona 42 21.6% 1

Cortes Generales[edit]

Election Leading candidate Congress Senate Government
Votes % Seats +/– Seats +/–
2023 Roberto Vaquero 46,274 0.19 (#14)
0 / 350
 0
0 / 208
 0 Extra-parliamentary

European Parliament[edit]

European Parliament
Election Leading candidate Votes % Seats +/–
2024 Roberto Vaquero 66,242 0.38 (#12)
0 / 61
 0

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "¿Interseccionando el capitalismo?". Barbaria (in Spanish). 27 December 2021. A esta Sagrada Familia de defensores del pasado capitalista hay que unir a otros más explícitamente contrarrevolucionarios, como el youtuber venido a más Roberto Vaquero. Vaquero es el líder del grupo estalinista (de la rama proalbanesa) Frente Obrero. En sus vídeos, al criticar la postmodernidad en nombre del capitalismo de Stalin y de la contrarrevolución que masacró al proletariado y sus minorías revolucionarias en el pasado, nos ayuda a entender de un modo más claro aún lo falaz de la dicotomía postmodernidad-antipostmodernidad. Cuando todos estos autores reivindican a la clase obrera, en realidad, no están reivindicando al proletariado como clase revolucionaria, en el sentido de Marx y de nuestra tradición, sino a la clase obrera sociológica, explotada, reducida a los engranajes de la sociedad capitalista con sus patrias, su lógica productiva y obrerista. Su tradición es la del nacionalcomunismo, que tiene detrás de sí una larga historia.
  2. ^ a b c Forti, Steven (20 December 2023). "El parasitismo ideológico de las nuevas extremas derechas. Gramscistas de derechas y rojipardos en Francia, Italia y España (1968-2022)". Estudos Ibero-Americanos (in Spanish). 49 (1). PUCRS: 19. doi:10.15448/1980-864X.2023.1.44161. ISSN 1980-864X. A partir de 2019, el retroceso electoral de Podemos ha planteado la apertura de un posible espacio para opciones rojipardas, representadas por algunos de los sectores críticos con la formación fundada por Pablo Iglesias y experiencias como la del Frente Obrero, liderado por Roberto Vaquero, movimiento que mezcla el marxismo-leninismo con posiciones ultraconservadoras en temas de valores (GÓMEZ URZAIZ, 2022; FORTI, 2021).
  3. ^ a b Balaguer Navarro, Asier (29 January 2024). "El fenómeno del Frente Obrero en España". Nueva Libertad (in Spanish). El Frente Obrero está en contra de la UE, sigue teniendo una base comunista en la que lo público y lo planificado son parte sustancial de sus teorías económica; es abiertamente republicano, anti OTAN, laico…
  4. ^ "Sobre el Frente Obrero y los migrantes: del patriotismo socialista al nacional bolchevismo". indymedia.org (in Spanish). 25 April 2023. Porque al reivindicar, el Frente Obrero, en la España imperialista y capitalista del siglo XXI, el patriotismo socialista del FRAP y el PCE (m-l), nacido durante las incertidumbres del tardofranquismo, dicho patriotismo se deposita, preferentemente, en aquellos sectores obreros o de clase media que no están alienados nacionalmente al poseer, aunque precariamente, dichos derechos de ciudadanía.
  5. ^ "Una crítica marxista al programa electoral del Frente Obrero (1º Parte)". canarias-semanal.org (in Spanish). 17 July 2023. El PML (RC), partido que tenía una línea marxista vulgar y con ciertas filias hacia el hoxhaismo, pareció recoger el guante de su secretario general y comenzó a tener una línea muy similar a la del canal de Youtube de su líder. En 2018, ya pasado todo lo relacionado con el problema que les originó su participación en la guerra imperialista en Siria, el PML(RC) fundó el Frente Obrero, al que quisieron convertir en su "frente de masas".
  6. ^ a b c d "Return of the Old Left: A Look at the Spanish Worker's Front". europeanconservative.com. 2023-03-25. Retrieved 2023-07-09.
  7. ^ a b c "The Moroccan civil society in Spain condemns the hostile campaign against Morocco". Atalayar. 20 July 2023. ... by the microscopic leftist, communist Leninist Frente Obrero party, through posters attacking a symbol of Moroccan sovereignty, in an immoral way that has nothing to do with freedom of expression.
  8. ^ a b c "56,000 Spanish Flags in Murcia city to highlight Covid dead in Spain". Murcia Today. 19 October 2020. In Valencia, left-wing protestors from the Frente Obrero ripped al the flags out and threw them away before the symbolic manifesto could be read out at mid-day.
  9. ^ a b c Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús (18 June 2024). "Classical Right, New Right, and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment" (PDF). AEI Economics Working Paper. 11/2024. University of Pennsylvania: 20. The two most relevant among these parties are an environmentalist party, Partido Animalista con el Medio Ambiente, and a left-wing Spanish nationalist party, Frente Obrero, which may have attracted some of the more pro-labor Vox votes.
  10. ^ "Presentación del comité pro-Frente Obrero España" (PDF). UNION. October 2018. p. 6.
  11. ^ "LA MARCHA DEL FRENTE OBRERO" (PDF). UNION. January 2018. p. 10.
  12. ^ Costello, Eugene (23 April 2021). "Okupas In Valencia: "Venceremos! No Pasarán!"". Valencia Life.
  13. ^ I CONGRESO DEL FRENTE OBRERO, retrieved 2023-07-09
  14. ^ "Un grupo radical de izquierda alienta una protesta en Ferraz contra la amnistía". El Debate (in Spanish). 2023-11-09. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
  15. ^ "Iker Jiménez y su Horizonte arrasan hablando de Ábalos con Roberto Vaquero de invitado". e-noticies.cat (in Spanish). 2024-03-01. Retrieved 2024-06-01.
  16. ^ a b Roja, Corriente (31 January 2023). "¿Qué es, en realidad, Frente Obrero?". kaosenlared.net (in Spanish).
  17. ^ "PROGRAMA". Frente Obrero España (in Spanish). 2022-09-07. Retrieved 2023-07-09.
  18. ^ a b Balaguer Navarro, Asier (29 January 2024). "El fenómeno del Frente Obrero en España". Nueva Libertad (in Spanish).
  19. ^ "The Workers' Front revives the "they will not pass" warning that "Islamism wants to conquer Spain"". The Objective (in Spanish). 2023-07-19.
  20. ^ de Cea, Pablo (18 November 2023). "De Solidaridad a Frente Obrero: los lobos con piel de cordero que intentan captar el voto tradicional de izquierdas". Infobae (in Spanish).
  21. ^ "Nos presentamos a las elecciones catalanas". frenteobrero.es (in Spanish).
  22. ^ Bravo, Alejandro (21 May 2021). "Debate. El Frente Obrero con la "soberanía nacional" imperialista y contra Lenin". La Izquierda Diaro (in Spanish).
  23. ^ "Frente Obrero, un discurso político homofóbico y racista que promueve la división de la clase trabajadora". La Izquierda Diario - Red internacional (in Spanish). Retrieved 2023-07-09.
  24. ^ "El partido de los escraches a Sánchez y Podemos se presenta a las elecciones por primera vez en Castilla y León". El Español (in Spanish). 2023-06-21. Retrieved 2023-07-09.
  25. ^ https://aldescubierto.org/2023/02/03/desmontando-las-mentiras-de-roberto-vaquero-y-la-ultraderecha-sobre-la-inmigracion/
  26. ^ https://www.atalayar.com/en/articulo/politics/frente-obrero-denies-being-in-the-service-of-algeria-and-having-received-money-from-the-north-african-country/20230720104111188485.html
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