Politicising the Pandemic Recovery? Opposition Strategies against the Spanish Government’s COVID-19 Measures

Abstract

This article examines Spain’s COVID-19 pandemic recovery from the perspective of politicisation as a form of political activity. The main argument is that politicisation must be considered more broadly as a part of democratic politics, as distinct from the too narrow theoretical framework of European Union (EU) politicisation. The analysis builds on recent conceptual research into politicisation and asks: Has Spain’s pandemic recovery become politicised and, if so, in what way did this politicisation occur and to what extent have politicising strategies been used? In Spain, political parties have not openly engaged in conflict about the country’s membership of the EU, but they do have a clear tendency towards a deeply partisan and highly polarised approach to domestic politics, aggravated since the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis focuses on opposition strategies during the period from the beginning of March 2020 to the end of December 2023. The main conclusion of the analysis is that politicising strategies were used by the opposition parties in contexts that gave them opportunities to exploit the situation in a novel way. On those occasions, it is possible to identify four different dimensions of politicisation. This illustrates that by attempting to utilise novel ways of acting politically, politicisation effectively becomes an intervention in the current state of affairs for political purposes. This conclusion can provide a useful conceptual framework for future research into pandemic recovery in a comparative sense and also into the concept of politicisation within democratic politics in general.

Keywords

• covid-19 pandemic
• politicisation
• opposition
• spain
• democracy