"Right-wing extremist parties have been rather weak in southern Europe. The two main exceptions have been the case of the Front National in France and the various far right traditions in Italy, which since the 1990s have gained increasing prominence in their respective party systems.

Since the 2007 Financial Crisis —and the austerity policies that followed—the prominence of these parties has increased significantly. Organizational discontinuities, the emergence of new actors, or changes in leadership and electoral strategies suggest that during these years there has been a fourth wave of evolution of far-right parties in southern countries of the continent. The emergence of Vox or Chega in Spain and Portugal respectively, Italian radical right's break up with previous traditions, or the quantitative and qualitative leap experienced by the new Marine Le Pen-led Front National are surely good examples of some of the distinctive features of this new stage.

In order to explore this and other similar issues emerging since the 2019 European elections, Fundacio Nexe and the Coppieters Foundation organized a workshop entitled “Facing the new radical right in southern Europe” in May 2019. This book is, to a large extent, the result of the work carried out during those days in which several European experts addressed various issues related to the radical right in Europe, Spain and the Valencian Country.

This book's aim is to show readers the main radical right-wing parties' evolution through a comparative overview in Spain and southern Europe in recent years. The main guiding question throughout the whole research is to point out the impact that the Financial Crisis of 2007 has had on these parties. The book is divided into two major parts. The first part deals with the main radical right-wing parties' evolution in Italy, France and Portugal before and after the economic crisis that hit Europe between the late 2000s and mid-2010s. The book's second part focuses on the Spanish case.

The authors examine the remarkable transformations experienced inside parties that had already been relevant in previous decades, the demand and supply factors that limited these parties' settlement during the previous decades, as well as those helping to understand their current growth, and lastly, the authors consider some of the challenges faced by this new political family in southern Europe."

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