Old G.K. Chesterton urged us always to drink because we are happy and never because we are sad. Yesterday I failed to comply with the advice of the sage Londoner, but there were compelling reasons. 

All the polls that assured us a swing to the right in Spain's July 23 general election were wrong.  All hopes that a country with weight in Europe would join Giorgia Meloni's Italy in stopping the E.U.'s leftward drift have vanished. All hopes that change in Spain and Italy could represent a major force at the U.N. in bringing the West back to common sense, abandoning the predations of wokeism and environmentalism have also gone to hell. There was not enough whiskey in Spain last night for us conservatives to wash down so much disappointment. 

Explaining what has happened to people outside of Spain is difficult, and not only because of the hangover. The center-right Popular Party, led by Alberto Nunez Feijoo, won the elections, but it would be easier for Al Gore to pass through the eye of a needle than for the P.P. to govern. The Spanish electoral system is not presidential but parliamentary. To govern with full powers, with an absolute majority, a party needs to obtain at least 176 seats, or else make a pact with another friendly party until they reach that majority. 

The Popular Party has obtained 136 seats against the 122 of the current prime minister, the Socialist Pedro Sanchez. But even adding the friendly votes, from the right-wing Vox to like-minded minority parties, the P.P coalition would be five representatives away from being able to govern. Feijoo says he wants to govern in minority, but in order to be invested the Socialists would have to abstain in the vote. That, less than a possibility, is a joke.

Sanchez is an unscrupulous individual capable of doing anything to stay in power. He embodies something akin to Sanders's political program, albeit with Biden's moral laxity. To achieve his investiture, Sanchez would have to enter a pact with Communists, Basque and Galician independents, the heirs of the terrorist group ETA, and those convicted on charges related to the secessionist coup in Catalonia in 2017 whom he subsequently pardoned. None of these parties offer their support for free: All are already demanding power. They want the independence of their regions and the construction of far-left republics in, at least, Catalonia and the Basque Country, which would mean the end of Spain as we know it and a new problem for the whole of Europe. 

Internationally, the allies of the Spanish left are neither Brussels nor the Atlanticism with which Aznar and Bush brought the United States and Spain closer than ever, but Latin American Bolivarian tyrants and obscure allies from nearby, where Islam is the official state religion. Sanchez is about to form a government in Spain with the sum of each and every one of Spain's enemies. What could possibly go wrong? 

His case should be studied everywhere. He represents the most dangerous type of leftist because, though he does not believe in anything, he is capable of oscillating between progressivism and populist extremism without batting an eye if it allows him to stay in government. His administration has been rife with scandal and yet he has obtained many more votes than expected. 

His incompetence is endless, and it is hard to understand why he has been voted for by nearly 7,700,000 people—compared to the little more than 8,000,000 who voted for the P.P. If I had more faith in mankind I would be inclined to believe that this is a result of rigging, but then I would be a leftist. Actually, I feel closer to H.L. Mencken here: “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

What is happening in Spain is happening all over the West. The left has so triumphed in its cultural, educational, and media wars, has so inoculated relativism and sectarianism, that its leaders can commit the worst barbarities and still receive millions of votes. This forces the conservatives to draw up a plan that goes beyond winning the next election. Although, unfortunately, the only way to implement it would be to start by winning the next elections. 

Returning to Spain, the Vox party of Santiago Abascal has lost power, but has remained above what the polls were saying, with three million votes. Vox is important because its seats are necessary for the P.P. to hypothetically govern at some point, and Abascal will never let center-right Feijoo turn social democratic and dangerous like Emmanuel Macron. 

The other good news, if we can call it that, points to the fact that Sanchez—in order to buy the support of Catalan separatists and the Basque philo-terrorists—will have to take steps that the Spanish constitution does not allow him to take. He has two ways forward: to dismantle the constitution (most likely), and perhaps even dethrone our beloved King Felipe VI, or to condemn the country to an institutional blockade until new early elections end this unexpected standoff between right and left...if they end. 

Now half of Spain wants to hang sociologists and pollsters for having been so wrong and having created false hopes. It so happens that, as a sociologist by training, I already had the worst possible opinion of us and our scientific techniques before knowing the election results. Speaking of hanging: Vox campaigned on throwing the U.N. Agenda 2030 into the wastebasket. Both Davos and the European Commission expressed concern about the dangers of a government with Vox, but you can bet that no liberal institution will say anything about the imminent possibility of Spain becoming a Venezuela at the heart of the E.U. 

Nevertheless, do not look for me amongst the mourners. Centuries ago, a Spain devastated by Islam and almost rendered extinct raised its morale and mounted the Reconquista—thanks, in large part, to the protection and the apparitions of St. James. We continue to trust in his protection, although it does feel today like he wants us to beg for it.