Voices of Discontent: Unpacking Populist Rhetoric in Spain and the Rise of Anti-European Sentiment

Abstract

In the last decade, most EU countries have seen the unstoppable growth of populist parties, especially on the right, but also on the left. Their Euro-critical discourse, sometimes openly Eurosceptic, is helping to erode the legitimacy of the EU. This research aims to analyze the presence of populist discourse among major Spanish political parties during the 2024 European elections on platform X. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, we collected tweets from the official accounts of parties represented in the Spanish parliament, focusing on Unidas Podemos, Sumar, Parido Socialista Obrero Español, Partido Popular, and VOX from May 24 to June 10, 2024. A quantitative analysis with large language models, specifically the Text-Zero-Shot model, BART-Large-MNLI, and a socio-hermeneutic qualitative interpretation facilitated the identification of key populist indicators, including anti-elitism, appeals to the people, the expression of popular will, and the delineation of enemies. Our findings reveal that VOX is the only political party that, in this specific communicative (social network X) and political (European Parliament elections) context, employs a populist discourse characterized by a marked opposition between the people and political elites, both national and European, as well as critical and/or exclusionary rhetoric toward certain immigrant groups, especially from Arab countries. The results underscore the need for further research on how national contexts shape the articulation of populism in political communication strategies through social media.