Spanish far-right party Vox achieved a historic result in Sunday’s general election in Spain entering the country’s Congress for the first time in a vote that was won by the ruling Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Vox won a total of 10.3% of the votes cast in Spain’s early general election on Sunday, which translates into 24 seats in the Spanish Congress, making the far-right formation the fifth largest in the new parliament, El Pais reported.

Vox has received 50 times more votes than it did in the Spanish general election back in 2016.

Until now, Spain has been one of the largest EU member states to lack a far-right formation in its parliament, and the anti-immigrant Vox party scored its first major electoral success in Spanish region Andalusia’s election in December 2018.

During the general election in 2016, the far-right party received just 46,781 votes, 0.2% of the total number of cast votes.

Despite the parliamentary breakthrough of the far right, however, Vox’s leader Santiago Abascal described the party’s result as a source of “joy but also concern”.

The reason for the “concern” are the expectations fueled by Vox’s mass campaign rallies that the far right could win enough votes to form a coalition government together with the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) party.

Vox leaders blamed the failure to create a right-wing bloc on the PP and Ciudadanos, arguing that they had divided the right.

Abascal made clear his disappointment the right-wing formations did not win enough votes to “get rid of the Popular Front”, seemingly referring to the Socialist Party (PSOE), Unidas Podemos (UP) and the pro-independence parties. These are precisely the formations that are expected to reach a deal to form Spain’s new Cabinet.

“Spain is worse today than yesterday. Vox is more needed than ever,” Abascal declared.

“Vox is here to stay… Millions of Spaniards are going to vote with hope and without fear of anybody or anything,” the Vox leader stated as he cast his vote in Madrid.

He pointed out that the next challenge for the far-right party would be the EU elections set for May 26 in Spain together with regional and municipal elections.

(Banner image: Vox party on Twitter)