Workers' Front (Spain)

Workers' Front (Spanish: Frente Obrero, FO) is a left-wing to far-left Spanish political party founded as a mass organization by the anti-revisionist party PML (RC) in October 2018 and registered as a separate political party in March 2019. As of 2024, it is headed by Roberto Vaquero. It considers itself a “patriotic and revolutionary movement that fights for and on behalf of workers, for and on behalf of Spain”, with the goal of implementing “drastic changes” in Spain and “ending the current regime”. It is considered a communist formation that adheres to Marxist–Leninism, but one with deeply conservative stances on social and cultural issues.

History
The Workers' Front was established on October 14, 2018 at the Ateneo de Madrid as a front organization of the PML(RC). Subsequently, the Workers' Front expanded to several cities in Spain, such as La Coruña, León, Ponferrada, Zaragoza, and Cádiz.

The party was founded by Roberto Vaquero, who also founded the Marxist–Leninist Party (Communist Reconstruction) (CR) in 2009. The party was temporarily outlawed in 2016 when Vaquero was arrested in 2016 for organizing the transport of Spanish militias to the People's Defense Units in Syria to fight against ISIS; Vaquero was suspected to have ties with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, although no evidences were found later. Vaquero was in jail for 49 days in jail, and the party resumed activities in 2017, before Vaquero founded Frente Obrero in 2018.

In 2021, the party participated in Okupas, a Spanish squatting movement. Frente Obrero occupied a prestigious builing in Mercado de Colón district in Valencia. It organized a food bank and the homeless shelter in the building, attacking the local government for not helping over 1000 homeless people in Valencia. The party also hung the flag of the Second Spanish Republic on the building.

In May 2021, the members of the party organized a protests against the leader of the Podemos party Irene Montero, in Valencia. The part accused Montero and her party of "leaving the workers in the lurch", claiming that the Podemos party organizes bailouts to banks and companies while Spanish workers are going "months without pay and suffering evictions". Frente Obrero protesters argued that the feminist and pro-LGBT stances taken by Montero are "symbolic struggles that do not represent reality".

On June 12, 2022, their first congress was held. During the congress the decision to become a political party was approved by the members. Representatives from other organizations, such as the Polisario Front, spoke during the congress.

In the 2023 Spanish general election, the party gained 46,530 and won no seats.

In late 2023, the group announced they would be participating in the 2023 Spanish protests against the PSOE government.

Since then, they, and especially their leader, Roberto Vaquero, have gained presence in social media and even national televisions in Spain, participating in debates on current political issues in programs such as Horizonte, on channel Cuatro.

In the 2024 European Parliament election in Spain, the party won 66,242	votes, improving its result from the 2023 general elections where it received 46,274 votes.

Ideology
Frente Obrero has been described as a party that adheres to Marxism–Leninism with conservative stances on social and cultural issues. It has also been described as Stalinist. However, despite being strongly connected with the PML(RC) and supporting far-left ideologies such as Marxism–Leninism, the FO is not explicitly communist. However, the party is described as communist by the Spanish newspapers of record, such as El Mundo, who classified Frente Obrero as "a communist, republican, anti-oligarchic party". The party rejects the labels of political left and right, arguing that they "are two sides of the same coin". However, it is considered left-wing by political commentators as well as political scientists;   it has also been commonly described as far-left,    with one Valencian newspaper arguing that the party is "about as far left as you can get". The The European Conservative described the party as a representative of the "patriotic, pre-woke, pro-work left."

The leader of Frente Obrero, Roberto Vaquero, wrote of the party: "The need for workers' reorganisation is vital, it is necessary to fight for workers' and revolutionary unity in a broad, united front of all workers. With this aim in mind, the Frente Obrero was born, which only tries to serve the unity of all those who want to rebuild a revolutionary, working class and militant left, which truly resists this system and its single thinking, which defends the workers, our country and which of course is aimed at the transformation and progress of our society." He defined Frente Obrero as a "national political and revolutionary front with the aim of fighting for the unity of the workers and for the transformation of our society, it is committed to a popular and federal Republic aimed at socialism."

In their program A Spain for the Workers, they defend national sovereignty, Hispanic identity, free university education, the nationalization of strategic economic sectors, energy sovereignty, nuclear energy, increasing the minimum wage, supporting the rural sector, promoting birth rates, creating more public housing, introducing rent control and limiting immigration. The party also focuses on class struggle and a planned, communist economy. Frente Obrero also wants to preserve the "classical, Christian" culture of Spain, and supports Spanish republicanism.

They oppose capitalism, the European Union, NATO, surrogacy, feminism, deindustrialization, queer theory, the Trans Law, affirmative action, islamization, cosmopolitanism and political correctness.

The party opposes immigration, advocates strict border control and argues that the wages of Spanish workers are declining because of liberal immigration laws. However, the party also stresses that “immigrants are not to blame” and are “victims”, with the real culprit being “the capitalist system, which promotes this type of migration to exploit them and lower wages in Spain” and that “the most rancid right uses immigration to generate hatred and social confrontation”. Thus, the party recommends strict control of immigration, including the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants.

Frente Obrero is heavily critical of socially progressive left-wing parties. The party accused Podemos of being "a pawn at the service of big business and banks", while arguing that Más País is "leaving the workers on the street". Frente Obrero argues that the mainstream left-wing parties of Spain alienated the workers and caused the rise of the far-right Vox by embracing neoliberal economics as well as "gender ideology". The party also argues that there are many similarities between fascism and liberalism.

The party also opposes the independence of Catalonia, arguing that the pro-independence Catalan parties "do not even represent independence" and instead have "fostered Islamisation and mass immigration in Catalonia". The party calls for Catalan voters to reject "Islamisation and the fictitious separatist process". The party instead proposes to turn Spain into a federation. It also supports Spanish ownership of Ceuta and Mellila, and decries Moroccan claim to these cities.

While Frente Obrero defines itself within the framework of Marxism–Leninism, it heavily incorporates nationalist and patriotic themes into its message. The party stresses and promoted the need to defend the 'national sovereignty' of Spain, as well as revolutionary patriotism and national pride. Within its communist rhetoric, Frente Obrero particularly stresses the policies and ideas of Stalinism. It also condemns the May 68 protests, with leader of the party, Roberto Vaquero, claiming: "The left today is the heir of May 1968, when, as Pasolini said, the most working-class people in that conflict were the police, who were at least the sons of peasants. The students were, for the most part, the sons of rich people, since money was needed to study. The left today is empty, there is no revolution."

Criticism
The party has been criticized by other leftist organizations as transphobic because of denying the gender ideology and the idea that the gender (especially being a woman) is only a "feeling".

Moreover, they have considered it reactionary and racist because of being strongly opposed to the increasing presence of Islamic immigration not integrated into European societies (sometimes non-respectful with women's or LGBT's rignts, other times linked to higher crime rates than the native population, or with violent events motivated by religious fanaticism).

In addition, they have been compared (negatively) to the right-wing party Vox because of some coincidences in the aforementioned ideas.

It has also been accused of giving credit to the Great Replacement theory, despite the fact that it is a logical consequence of the combination of the current European demography and the current migratory patterns.

In November 2022, the party was attacked by organizing a march in the Complutense University of Madrid that exalted Joseph Stalin. The event resulted in the members of the party clashing with local far-left student organizations, including the Trotskyist Workers' Revolutionary Current.

In 2023, FO was accused of having received money from the Algerian government by Euromagreb. This was later denied by the party.

The party has been called "left-wing VOX" given its conservative stances on social issues, such as its opposition to immigration, LGBT and feminism, as well as attacking the "islamization" of Spain and "gender ideology". However, Spanish political analyst Asier Balaguer Navarro rejects this claim, writing: "Yes, in the sense that many of its proposals, precisely those that coincide with the conservative party, have a lot of social resonance, and are easily assimilated by the electoral objective of the party; also yes, because of the confrontation with political correctness, defense of the unity of Spain or the rejection of the "woke laws". But that is where the similarities end. The Workers' Front is against the EU, it still has a communist base in which the public and the planned are a substantial part of its economic theories; it is openly republican, anti-NATO, secular..."

Elections
The FO participated in elections for the first time in the 2023 Spanish local elections. They ran in Vilalba dels Arcs (Catalonia), Santa Margalida (Balearic Islands), Mislata (Valencian Community), and Mandayona (Castilla–La Mancha), winning one seat in Mandayona.