Can Vox’s rainbow flag campaign help it to triumph in the Spanish election?

Cultural issues, or ‘Woke Wars’, have surfaced to inflame an already tense general election held in the scorching temperatures of a Spanish summer. Spain’s third largest party – the hard-right populist Vox – is fuelling a backlash among Spaniards against town halls flying LBGT flags. Vox has insisted that the symbol of the LGBT movement be removed from the regional authority office in the Balearic Islands. A new socialist law targeting male domestic violence is another central plank in the party’s campaign. Vox, which is led by Santiago Abascal, argues that the law discriminates against men and should be amended to cover all domestic violence without specifying the sex of offenders. But will these battles be enough to win them power, or might they come to backfire?

The snap poll in Spain on 23 July was called by Pedro Sanchez, the socialist prime minister, after his ruling PSOE party suffered huge losses in local elections in May, crippling its legislative programme.