Conspiracy theories are increasingly prominent in Spanish politics. José Javier Olivas Osuna, Maik Herold and Felix Hormig explain how conspiracy narratives are being instrumentalised by both the radical right and left to shape social perceptions and delegitimise institutions.
Spain represents a compelling yet underexplored case in the study of conspiracy theories. Historically, some conspiracy theories have been prominent in Spain, including those targeting Jewish communities from the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century and those aimed at Freemasons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These theories fused during the Francoist regime to form the so called “judeo-masonic” conspiracy.
Following the terrorist attacks by jihadist groups in Madrid in 2004 and Catalonia in 2017, conspiracy theories emerged accusing state institutions and political elites of enabling or allowing the attacks to occur deliberately. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, various conspiracy theories spread through social media and were instrumentalised by certain political actors, such as the radical right party Vox.
Additionally, Spain exhibits a troubling decline of political trust, increasing political and partisan affective polarisation and growing support for populism. Left-wing parties – such as Podemos and Sumar – and peripheral nationalist parties – such as Junts per Catalonia, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and EH Bildu – consistently use populist and polarising messages and maintain high levels of public visibility.
More importantly, right-wing populism is expanding fast. For many years, analysts spoke of a “Spanish” or “Iberian exception” due to the absence of strong populist radical right parties. However, Vox is now the third-largest party, with substantial representation in the national and regional parliaments, as well as an expanding presence in municipal governments.
Notably, support for Vox is increasing among young Spaniards. At the same time, another new radical right party, the Catalan Alliance (Aliança Catalana), which openly adopts Islamophobic and Hispanophobic views has become the third most popular party in terms of direct voting intentions in Catalonia.
The great replacement theory in Spain
The great replacement theory was popularised by the French writer Renaud Camus in 2011, who argued that European civilisation is at risk of being supplanted through the mass arrival of newcomers.
Since then, right-wing groups have argued that domestic cosmopolitan elites are conspiring to promote the influx of Muslims and expand Islamic culture in Europe. Although this idea was not at first very popular in Spain, it has quickly spread thanks to political parties such as Vox and the Catalan Alliance, as well as far-right intellectuals and online influencers.
A recent survey conducted by Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy (MIDEM), in cooperation with YouGov, revealed that – in just three years (from 2022 to 2025) – Spain has gone from being the country with the lowest percentage of people firmly believing in a conspiracy to replace native populations with immigrants to the one where this belief is most widespread (see Figure 1).
This period coincided with Vox adopting a more hardline anti-immigration discourse following two migratory incidents in Ceuta (in 2021) and Melilla (in 2022), as well as the increased public visibility of Silvia Orriols, the leader of the Catalan Alliance. They each combine demographic, security-related and cultural protectionist arguments that demonise “illegal immigrants”, particularly Muslims.
Figure 1: Who believes in the great replacement theory?
Note: The figure shows the share of the population that believes a great replacement conspiracy is extremely likely or certain. As the “don’t know/prefer not to say” option was only offered in 2025, the absolute values between the two waves are not directly comparable. Nevertheless, the relative positions or rankings of the countries can still be reliably interpreted. Data from Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy (MIDEM), Dresden University of Technology, Germany, 2025.
At the same time, Vox leaders have increasingly resorted to conspiratorial rhetoric in their speeches. For example, they have repeatedly accused the Spanish government of treason, arguing that Morocco plans to gain control of the Spanish enclaves in North Africa through demographic means.
Santiago Abascal, the party’s secretary-general, has claimed that the Spanish government “has an agenda of population substitution”, while Vox MP Ortega Smith has alluded to an “invasion by substitution” and accused NGOs of being part of human trafficking mafias. Meanwhile, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé has asserted that there is “a real will in Brussels to set in motion a population replacement in Europe” and that the EU wants to import millions of workers from other continents to “mix” them with the “European races”.
Meanwhile, Silvia Orriols has taken an even more emphatic stance, claiming that “western values are threatened” and that in that context “Islamophobia becomes a duty”. She has argued that all official data regarding crime and immigration are manipulated by pro-immigration and left-wing governments.
In a TV interview, Orriols also claimed that the “Spanish State has been 400 years trying to annihilate the Catalan people… and now has found an easy and quick method that is sending us massively immigrants of anti-western origin and also conflictive ones to generate insecurity in our streets and dilute us as a nationality”. She concluded that the “Spanish State” wants to annihilate Catalans through “a demographic, linguistic and cultural substitution”.
Such anti-immigration narratives have taken advantage of the migratory crises experienced in Spain (mostly in coastal areas such as Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla) and have instilled growing concerns about immigration, as reflected in Eurobarometer surveys and in studies by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Investigation.
While fear of immigrants and support for radical right parties in Spain remains lower than the European average, the rapidly growing belief in the “great replacement” theory suggests that nativist conspiratorial discourses could quickly shape social perceptions in Spain.
The deep state
However, conspiratorial ideas in Spain are not confined to the radical right or to narratives about demographic replacement. “Deep state” and “lawfare” conspiracies, featuring accusations against judges, police officers and other public officials have also become increasingly mainstream.
Although these ideas were traditionally promoted primarily by secessionist parties and the radical left, since 2023, the Socialist Party (PSOE), a mainstream centre-left party and the senior partner in the governing coalition, has also begun to disseminate them tactically. Interpretive frames such as the “judicialisation of politics” or the “politicisation of justice” are now routinely employed to delegitimise judicial investigations involving politicians and their associates.
Figure 2: Who believes in a right-wing deep state conspiracy?
Note: The figure shows the share of the population that believes a right-wing deep state conspiracy is extremely likely or certain. Data from Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy (MIDEM), Dresden University of Technology, Germany, 2025.
The range of derogatory references to Spanish judges and security forces is striking, and the expression “state sewers” has become widely used. For example, leading figures in Catalan nationalist parties have asserted that “the Spanish sewer claimed the lives of 15 innocent people to send a message to the people of Catalonia” and that Spain “chose an attack to stop a referendum”, referring to the 2017 Islamist attacks in Catalonia.
In 2022, frustrated with the implementation of the Law of Sexual Freedom they had promoted, leaders of Podemos stated on social media and television that Spanish judges are “fascists with robe”, “male chauvinists” and “misogynist” and referred to “the judicial offensive of the judges as the armed wing of the right and extreme right”.
After the controversial Amnesty Law was negotiated with Catalan secessionist leaders who later benefited from it, Pedro Sánchez and several members of his government started talking about “lawfare” and criticising Spanish judges for deeming that the law did not apply in certain cases. Sánchez claimed that the Popular Party had “sequestrated the judiciary” and some ministers accused judges of interfering in politics and acting with political bias.
As several corruption scandals involving individuals close to Sánchez emerged – including his brother and wife, two former chief lieutenants within the PSOE organisation, the Spanish Attorney General and various other party members or government appointees – these references to “lawfare” and to a “deep state”-style plot became more frequent and intense.
For example, Sánchez suggested that judges colluded with right-wing politicians to harm him, while the speaker of the PSOE claimed that there is a “judicial front” against the government. More recently, a condemnatory sentence against the Spanish General Attorney by the Spanish Supreme Court triggered even more heated reactions from left-wing politicians, who openly speak of a “judicial coup d’état” on TV and in other media.
As Figure 2 shows, many people in Spain believe that a right-wing extremist network has infiltrated the government and is plotting to establish a dictatorship. In fact, only in Hungary do more respondents consider such a right-wing deep state conspiracy to be “extremely likely” or “certain”. It is worth noting that the responses are much more polarised in Spain than in all other European countries studied. Spaniards seem to either strongly endorse or strongly reject such a theory, depending on their ideology and preferred political party.
Conspiracy beliefs as political identity markers in Spain
A preliminary analysis of the political preference of survey respondents in Spain indicates that people’s political ideology is currently a good predictor of whether they believe in the great replacement theory or the right-wing deep state conspiracy theories (see Figure 3). Those at the extremes of the political spectrum strongly support one theory and reject the other.
Figure 3: Belief in conspiracy theories among political subgroups in Spain
Note: The figure shows Average responses to questions about agreement with the great replacement and right-wing deep state conspiracy theories in Spain, on a scale from 0 to 10, by left-right self-placement (above) and party affiliation (below). Data from Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy (MIDEM), Dresden University of Technology, Germany, 2025.
Social scientists typically try to understand the appeal of such theories based on pre-existing psychological attitudes but they do not so often focus on the capacity of political parties to make conspiracy theories mainstream and even weaponise them in their communications.
Although the findings presented here are only preliminary and should be treated with caution, they do suggest that conspiratorial thinking has become more popular in Spain in recent years. Political actors on both sides of the political spectrum have likely contributed to this increase by recklessly adopting conspiracy narratives in pursuit of short-term political advantages. By doing so, they have clearly done a disservice to democracy and to political culture in Spain as a whole.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: Laiotz provided by Shutterstock.
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