Martes, 28 de julio de 2026
CONVERSATIONS
Elias Dinas, political scientist: "Spain has been on the right side of history on migration"
Elias Dinas, director of the Swiss Chair in Federalism and International Governance at the European University Institute, speaks with Jorge de Diego, staff writer at 'Agenda Pública', about immigration, the radical right and democratic erosion in Europe. The political scientist warns about the role of traditional elites in normalizing certain frames, argues that "ignoring the issue does not work as a long-term strategy" and analyses the singular place Spain occupies in the European migration debate.
.jpg)
Elias Dinas (right), Director of the Swiss Chair in Federalism and International Governance at the EUI, talks to Jorge de Diego Hurtado, staff writer of 'Agenda Pública'.Agenda Pública
Sometimes, one has the right questions (or so one likes to believe), but no one to ask them to. From the moment I was told I would be able to speak with Professor Elias Dinas, I knew I would be sitting in front of someone capable of answering all those questions.
The Greek researcher is director of the Swiss Chair in Federalism and International Governance at the European University Institute. In Florence, during the fiftieth anniversary of the institution, I had the opportunity to speak with him —in perfect Spanish— about the erosion of democratic norms, the radical right and, above all, immigration.
This conversation comes on the eve of a tightening of the European Union’s migration policy, following the approval, among other measures, of the creation of deportation centres in third countries. The researcher offers a reading that goes to the root of the problem, starting with how immigration enters the political agenda: "Immigration entered the agenda through new actors, outsiders to the system, who expected to divide traditional elites", he explains.
He then turns his attention to the role played by the center-right both in the battle over these frames and in the maintenance of democratic norms. "When people talk about immigrants", he continues, "spillover effects are created" and the consequence is that "people begin to believe that the norm is changing and, by acting according to that expectation, they help it change". At the same time, he is aware that this is a complex challenge, because "we should not deny that accepting demographic change in the place where one lives is not always easy".
Finally, there is also time to talk about Spanish politics. On Pedro Sánchez, whom he calls "the new Tsipras", he highlights "his ability to survive politically and to dominate the center-left space". At the same time, he expresses doubts about his leftward turn on some issues and says he does not know "whether all of this began from intrinsic conviction or from a more strategic motivation".
On the plane, I was reading your article on how democratic norms are affected when a traditional party talks about immigration through a negative frame, compared with when a radical-right party does so. The focus is often placed on voters, but you focus on elites. What role do they play in transmitting or changing political frames, especially on immigration?
Immigration has changed European politics over the last almost thirty years for two reasons. The first is that there was a certain distance between the median voter and elites. Elites were more liberal than the median voter, and this was not entirely visible.
The second reason is that political systems tend to create gates of entry that exclude actors coming from outside the system. To enter, those actors have to think about issues or strategies outside the usual repertoire. One of them was precisely to open up a new issue: immigration. And it was an issue on which established elites were likely to become internally divided.
That is what happened. Immigration entered the agenda through new actors, outsiders to the system, who expected to divide traditional elites. And that deeply destabilized European party systems.
In some countries this happened already in the 1990s. In Spain it came later, also because of the shadow of the dictatorship, which made it harder to create a political market for a radical-right party. Something similar happened in Portugal. In Greece it happened earlier.
What has happened in many cases is that center-right parties have chosen to accommodate and incorporate part of that rhetoric into their own discourse. The problem is that, when this happens, those arguments gain credibility. They no longer come from a force outside the system, but from a party that is part of it.
That has a very strong signaling effect: if they are saying it too, then the problem seems important, serious and true. As a result, the risks and threats associated with immigrants, or with people perceived as outsiders to one’s own group, begin to break democratic norms and norms of coexistence. I think this is one of the roots of what we are seeing now.
The moderate right can stay outside that frame, try to challenge it or even anticipate it. But from the left, it sometimes seems that one simply cannot talk about security or immigration. If someone does, other parts of the left accuse them of playing into the hands of the radical right. How can this loop be broken?
The problem is that democratic norms are maintained precisely because they are norms, not only because everyone deeply believes in them. In Spain, for example, there were people who were very favorable toward the Franco regime, but for a long time they did not say so in public.
This is also happening with democratic norms more generally. When people talk about immigrants, about other groups or about the so-called anti-woke agenda, and when basic rules of respect for the political adversary are called into question, spillover effects are created.
There are successful new politicians openly challenging those norms. This produces a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: people begin to believe that the norm is changing and, by acting according to that expectation, they help it change. This is how the new norm spreads and the previous norms are broken. I think this is what we are experiencing in many European countries and also in the United States.
There does not seem to be a clear recipe to stop the growth of the radical right, except perhaps for these parties to enter government and then wear themselves down.
Yes, that is true. When these parties enter government, they often end up more marginalized or return to a minority position. Governing does not usually help them.
But there is an important nuance: once they have been in government or in positions of power, institutionally and also in terms of public perception, things do not return exactly to where they were before. A new equilibrium is created, and that equilibrium is no longer in the same place.
Even if one specific generation of radical-right elites is damaged by the experience of government, that experience creates a chain of new elites who can replace them. We have seen this, for example, in the Netherlands. In countries where the radical right has had duration and persistence, it has not always done so through a single party, but through a succession of parties or leaders. France is partly an exception, but even there new actors appear in the same space.
Once a political family is created, it becomes a difficult animal to hunt down. If you cut off one head, others appear.
Mainstream party officials often say they lack the discursive tools to fight the radical right. Is it being explained properly, for example, why immigration is necessary or why a border cannot simply be sealed off?
There are many studies showing the positive effects of immigration, both in the medium and long term, in the economy and in other areas, including culture. Some even explain part of Italy’s recent failure in football by saying that it has not sufficiently benefited from the human capital generated by immigration, as other national teams have done, including Spain to some extent.
Going into the data could create a conversation in which the idea that immigration is positive could become a majority view. The problem is that this conversation requires resources, time, favorable conditions and a process. Those conditions are not always there.
It is much easier to build a scapegoat. It is much easier to blame people who are not there to defend themselves. This also happens with Europe and other international institutions, but with immigrants it is even easier because they have less status, less capacity to defend themselves and are more vulnerable to accusations about jobs, crime or other problems.
The role of the media also matters. If the media pay more attention to exceptions, to cases that are not representative, that is what most people end up seeing.
Spain is trying to regularize more than half a million people, marking a certain break with other European countries. What do you think of this decision?
We are living through a very interesting period. Colleagues from Greece have asked me several times to speak about the Sánchez phenomenon. I am more critical of Pedro Sánchez than parts of the Italian, Greek or foreign left, perhaps because I know his trajectory and his shifts better.
That said, I have to recognize that I admire his ability to survive politically and to dominate the center-left space in Spain. I call him, in a way, the new Tsipras. Tsipras inspired the more radical left in 2015; even in Italy there were small parties carrying his name. Sánchez is doing something similar, but in a much broader space: the center-left, the moderate left and the left in general.
That can have positive effects. Spain has been on the right side of history on migration in recent years. I also see this in surveys: Spain has not had the same problem of hatred toward migrants or Syrian refugees as other European countries. It has been much more liberal on these issues.
I think it is positive for Spain to exercise a certain leadership on this question, at least within the European moderate left. This can already be seen in conversations in Italy, with the Democratic Party and Elly Schlein, and also in Greece. I do not know to what extent it can travel toward the north of the continent, but I do think it has the potential to become a tipping point.
I think this could become an important European conflict in the coming months.
To balance things out and conclude: earlier you said that you knew aspects of Sánchez that make you more critical of him. What did you mean?
In Greece and Italy, many people think Pedro Sánchez is a kind of Zapatero, a politician very focused on identity issues or second-dimension politics. But Sánchez was also the person who said from the beginning that he would reclaim the Spanish flag because it was important and that he would not hand it over to the right.
He had a huge Spanish flag in one campaign, reached an agreement with Ciudadanos and, when he understood that he needed the votes of pro-independence parties and regional parties, he changed his discourse.
He could no longer occupy that Spanish nationalist space from the left. So he did the opposite: he built a division between right and left through the memory of Francoism. He constantly reminds people that Franco is on the opposite side and creates a division between "us" and Franco’s heirs.
With that narrative come policies as well. It is positive that he follows and takes further the policies of Zapatero and other governments on migration, social rights or women’s labor rights. I think all of that is good.
The question I have is whether all of this began from intrinsic conviction or from a more strategic motivation.
Thank you very much.
The Greek researcher is director of the Swiss Chair in Federalism and International Governance at the European University Institute. In Florence, during the fiftieth anniversary of the institution, I had the opportunity to speak with him —in perfect Spanish— about the erosion of democratic norms, the radical right and, above all, immigration.
This conversation comes on the eve of a tightening of the European Union’s migration policy, following the approval, among other measures, of the creation of deportation centres in third countries. The researcher offers a reading that goes to the root of the problem, starting with how immigration enters the political agenda: "Immigration entered the agenda through new actors, outsiders to the system, who expected to divide traditional elites", he explains.
He then turns his attention to the role played by the center-right both in the battle over these frames and in the maintenance of democratic norms. "When people talk about immigrants", he continues, "spillover effects are created" and the consequence is that "people begin to believe that the norm is changing and, by acting according to that expectation, they help it change". At the same time, he is aware that this is a complex challenge, because "we should not deny that accepting demographic change in the place where one lives is not always easy".
Finally, there is also time to talk about Spanish politics. On Pedro Sánchez, whom he calls "the new Tsipras", he highlights "his ability to survive politically and to dominate the center-left space". At the same time, he expresses doubts about his leftward turn on some issues and says he does not know "whether all of this began from intrinsic conviction or from a more strategic motivation".
Dinas and De Diego, political scientists, discuss the role of the center-right in the immigration discourse. Photo: Agenda Pública
On the plane, I was reading your article on how democratic norms are affected when a traditional party talks about immigration through a negative frame, compared with when a radical-right party does so. The focus is often placed on voters, but you focus on elites. What role do they play in transmitting or changing political frames, especially on immigration?
Immigration has changed European politics over the last almost thirty years for two reasons. The first is that there was a certain distance between the median voter and elites. Elites were more liberal than the median voter, and this was not entirely visible.
The second reason is that political systems tend to create gates of entry that exclude actors coming from outside the system. To enter, those actors have to think about issues or strategies outside the usual repertoire. One of them was precisely to open up a new issue: immigration. And it was an issue on which established elites were likely to become internally divided.
That is what happened. Immigration entered the agenda through new actors, outsiders to the system, who expected to divide traditional elites. And that deeply destabilized European party systems.
In some countries this happened already in the 1990s. In Spain it came later, also because of the shadow of the dictatorship, which made it harder to create a political market for a radical-right party. Something similar happened in Portugal. In Greece it happened earlier.
"Center-right parties have chosen to accommodate and incorporate part of that rhetoric into their own discourse"Once immigration is on the agenda, established elites have to respond. They can accommodate it, that is, try to attract voters who have moved toward harder positions on immigration; they can confront those frames; or they can try to ignore them. But ignoring the issue does not work as a long-term strategy, because once a topic is on the agenda, it is on the agenda.
What has happened in many cases is that center-right parties have chosen to accommodate and incorporate part of that rhetoric into their own discourse. The problem is that, when this happens, those arguments gain credibility. They no longer come from a force outside the system, but from a party that is part of it.
That has a very strong signaling effect: if they are saying it too, then the problem seems important, serious and true. As a result, the risks and threats associated with immigrants, or with people perceived as outsiders to one’s own group, begin to break democratic norms and norms of coexistence. I think this is one of the roots of what we are seeing now.
The moderate right can stay outside that frame, try to challenge it or even anticipate it. But from the left, it sometimes seems that one simply cannot talk about security or immigration. If someone does, other parts of the left accuse them of playing into the hands of the radical right. How can this loop be broken?
The problem is that democratic norms are maintained precisely because they are norms, not only because everyone deeply believes in them. In Spain, for example, there were people who were very favorable toward the Franco regime, but for a long time they did not say so in public.
"When people talk about immigrants, about other groups or about the so-called 'anti-woke' agenda [...] spillover effects are created"With the process around the referendum in Catalonia, something interesting happened: it facilitated a certain coordination among people who discovered that others shared similar opinions. When someone updates their perception of how many people think like them, and begins to believe that their opinion is less stigmatized than they had thought, they become more likely to express it publicly.
This is also happening with democratic norms more generally. When people talk about immigrants, about other groups or about the so-called anti-woke agenda, and when basic rules of respect for the political adversary are called into question, spillover effects are created.
There are successful new politicians openly challenging those norms. This produces a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: people begin to believe that the norm is changing and, by acting according to that expectation, they help it change. This is how the new norm spreads and the previous norms are broken. I think this is what we are experiencing in many European countries and also in the United States.
Dinas explains how immigration has destabilized European party systems over recent decades. Photo: Agenda Pública
There does not seem to be a clear recipe to stop the growth of the radical right, except perhaps for these parties to enter government and then wear themselves down.
Yes, that is true. When these parties enter government, they often end up more marginalized or return to a minority position. Governing does not usually help them.
But there is an important nuance: once they have been in government or in positions of power, institutionally and also in terms of public perception, things do not return exactly to where they were before. A new equilibrium is created, and that equilibrium is no longer in the same place.
Even if one specific generation of radical-right elites is damaged by the experience of government, that experience creates a chain of new elites who can replace them. We have seen this, for example, in the Netherlands. In countries where the radical right has had duration and persistence, it has not always done so through a single party, but through a succession of parties or leaders. France is partly an exception, but even there new actors appear in the same space.
Once a political family is created, it becomes a difficult animal to hunt down. If you cut off one head, others appear.
Mainstream party officials often say they lack the discursive tools to fight the radical right. Is it being explained properly, for example, why immigration is necessary or why a border cannot simply be sealed off?
There are many studies showing the positive effects of immigration, both in the medium and long term, in the economy and in other areas, including culture. Some even explain part of Italy’s recent failure in football by saying that it has not sufficiently benefited from the human capital generated by immigration, as other national teams have done, including Spain to some extent.
Going into the data could create a conversation in which the idea that immigration is positive could become a majority view. The problem is that this conversation requires resources, time, favorable conditions and a process. Those conditions are not always there.
It is much easier to build a scapegoat. It is much easier to blame people who are not there to defend themselves. This also happens with Europe and other international institutions, but with immigrants it is even easier because they have less status, less capacity to defend themselves and are more vulnerable to accusations about jobs, crime or other problems.
The role of the media also matters. If the media pay more attention to exceptions, to cases that are not representative, that is what most people end up seeing.
"It is important to look at things in a more objective and rational way, without always being driven by emotions that make reasonable conclusions more difficult"That said, we should not deny that accepting demographic change in the place where one lives is not always easy. It is a process. But that is precisely why it is important to look at things in a more objective and rational way, without always being driven by emotions that make reasonable conclusions more difficult.
The Greek researcher analyses Spain’s position on immigration and Pedro Sánchez’s leadership within the European left. Photo: Agenda Pública
Spain is trying to regularize more than half a million people, marking a certain break with other European countries. What do you think of this decision?
We are living through a very interesting period. Colleagues from Greece have asked me several times to speak about the Sánchez phenomenon. I am more critical of Pedro Sánchez than parts of the Italian, Greek or foreign left, perhaps because I know his trajectory and his shifts better.
That said, I have to recognize that I admire his ability to survive politically and to dominate the center-left space in Spain. I call him, in a way, the new Tsipras. Tsipras inspired the more radical left in 2015; even in Italy there were small parties carrying his name. Sánchez is doing something similar, but in a much broader space: the center-left, the moderate left and the left in general.
That can have positive effects. Spain has been on the right side of history on migration in recent years. I also see this in surveys: Spain has not had the same problem of hatred toward migrants or Syrian refugees as other European countries. It has been much more liberal on these issues.
I think it is positive for Spain to exercise a certain leadership on this question, at least within the European moderate left. This can already be seen in conversations in Italy, with the Democratic Party and Elly Schlein, and also in Greece. I do not know to what extent it can travel toward the north of the continent, but I do think it has the potential to become a tipping point.
"Germany went from Merkel’s decision to accept one million people to a strong domestic backlash"The unfortunate coincidence is that this is happening just as Germany is moving in the opposite direction. Germany went from Merkel’s decision to accept one million people, which was also linked to a historical opportunity to assume responsibility from its own past, to a strong domestic backlash. And when Germany has that kind of reaction, there is always the fear of returning to very dark things. To avoid that internally, it starts pushing a much stricter European agenda on immigration.
I think this could become an important European conflict in the coming months.
To balance things out and conclude: earlier you said that you knew aspects of Sánchez that make you more critical of him. What did you mean?
In Greece and Italy, many people think Pedro Sánchez is a kind of Zapatero, a politician very focused on identity issues or second-dimension politics. But Sánchez was also the person who said from the beginning that he would reclaim the Spanish flag because it was important and that he would not hand it over to the right.
He had a huge Spanish flag in one campaign, reached an agreement with Ciudadanos and, when he understood that he needed the votes of pro-independence parties and regional parties, he changed his discourse.
He could no longer occupy that Spanish nationalist space from the left. So he did the opposite: he built a division between right and left through the memory of Francoism. He constantly reminds people that Franco is on the opposite side and creates a division between "us" and Franco’s heirs.
With that narrative come policies as well. It is positive that he follows and takes further the policies of Zapatero and other governments on migration, social rights or women’s labor rights. I think all of that is good.
The question I have is whether all of this began from intrinsic conviction or from a more strategic motivation.
Thank you very much.
.png)
Jorge de Diego Hurtado
Redactor en 'Agenda Pública'
Politólogo y analista electoral. Cuenta con experiencia en consultoría en Bruselas y actualmente es redactor en 'Agenda Pública'. También es cofundador de 'El Tablero Político'.
Ahora en portada
27 de julio de 2026
27 de julio de 2026
Lo más leído