The life of the political right in Argentina and in Spain has great similarities. In both countries an experiment is underway consisting of dragging their large conservative parties, in the first case Together for Change (JxC), in the second the PP, towards border positions or competition with extreme right-wing populism. A current that rides the ultra wave that is emitted from the US The objective: to broaden the electoral base for a new hard right and create the conditions to crystallize government coalitions leaning towards ultra-liberal and politically intransigent economic policies. The instrument for this has been newly created parties or movements. Both have had complicity within those conservative parties, to the point that they have largely incubated them. They have also received generous economic support from some wealthy, minority but relevant sectors.
Those chosen were, in the Spanish case, Santiago Abascal's Vox and in Argentina, Liberty advances from the country's new political star and ultra-global populism, Javier Milei. Between the two, great programmatic coincidences. Privatization of essential services, desire to turn their respective countries into tax havens, dismantling of the welfare state and the pension system, culture war and social discipline.
The first experiment, the Spanish one, for the moment, has not gone well. After a brilliant takeoff, he has lost electoral verve and has not provided enough push to accommodate a new PP, duly leaning towards the hard right, in La Moncloa. Now, the populares face an internal debate about their future steps given the prospect of continuing in opposition. Two great proposals, the absorption by assimilation of the extreme right (the Isabel Díaz Ayuso route, which coincides with Milei in insulting the idea of "social justice") or some variant of a return to the center (claimed by some barons and that Alberto Núñez Feijóo could come up again if he survives the perfect storm of the inauguration). In the Argentine case, things are more complicated, although if it ends in the worst scenario, the election of Milei as president of the country will show the Spaniards what they have saved. Punishment in someone else's head.
Argentina is enduring a long structural crisis. Their standard of living is lower than half a century ago and the poverty rate is dangerously close to 50% of the population, 60% if it refers to children. And it is heading at full speed towards a hyperinflation that at the moment is pulverizing purchasing power and wages and that will end up completely dislocating it.
Under these conditions, the political experiment launched with Milei is explosive, the crazy genius (as they call him) has come out of the bottle and now, on the way to the presidential elections in October, he refuses to be confined again. The hypothesis that he is the next head of state would mean a quantum leap towards a political and social crisis unknown even to a country so used to it. And it has already caused concern even among its own business backers.
Milei offers simple solutions, therefore surely wrong, for the complex problems of Argentina. The first of them, the dollarization of the economy. Paradoxical proposal of those who postulate that the country recovers its lost greatness and begins with the resignation of monetary sovereignty. But what is relevant is that dollarizing means reducing economic activity to the number of US bills available. A true national suicide for a country that depends on the export of raw materials, and their price, to obtain foreign currency. The population that does not have their money abroad and in dollars, the vast majority, including their own voters, will fall into destitution. First the brutal contraction, then the crash and the social explosion. Spraying not only of the most modest, this is always so; also from the bulk of the already severely punished middle classes.
But a very large part of Argentine society does not listen to reason and votes with contempt, resentment and despair. Any historical comparison is possible. From the deranged Germany between the wars to the very poor Russia of the transition from the Soviet model to oligarch capitalism.
Milei was unknown until relatively recently. His rise to fame came thanks to his television appearances on a station linked to one of the richest men in Argentina and manager of the airport network, the octogenarian Eduardo Eurnekian. Milei's boss for many years, he paid his payroll until the eve of taking the act of deputy, in December 2021. For the Argentine press, the association between the president of Corporación América and the far-right leader is an undoubted fact.
From politics, Milei has also received very special blessings. Starting with that of former President Mauricio Macri. Despite being the head of Juntos por el cambio, the opposition to the ruling Kichnerism, Macri has turned to flattery and congratulations towards the ultra-liberal and months ago he made clear his intention to agree with him.
But Macri's goal went further. Elisa Carrió, another veteran Argentine politician and leader of one of the formations that are part of JxC, assured that the former president wanted to reach an alliance with the far-right to apply a "very brutal adjustment to the middle class in four months." Carrió spoke of a plan that "has a notion of order that is that you have to suppress until you kill if necessary."
Perhaps because of these supports, Milei always talks about the caste, the corrupt politicians, as the great problem of the country, but she never mentions that her two great supporters have generated their fortunes thanks to privileged relationships with the rulers of the day. The State is always a problem when it gives money to others.
