I really don’t know what happened in central and specially north Europe. Like how the Finish gave up their long appreciated non-NATO alliance that so much prosperity gave them is beyond me. Talking to Finish people today (lots coming to Spain!) is like they are in amnesia and unable to verbalize an answer… social media?!
Vox won’t do damage per se, but it may force the leading Right-wing party PP for some concessions. I highly doubt Vox will ever lead in Spain. Madrid right-wing cannot get too bold or Catalans and Basques will be soon doing referendums… an irony, when Spaniards vote for more nationalism, it will get less Spain. After 2 years observing Spanish press and social media, I see a tremendous disparity between that and the society, marking strong manipulation.
It is, no completely by design, but mostly incidentally, but it is. Spaniards also are showing themselves as far more pragmatic and tolerant of the new realities than the rest of the EU. Now, the current PM is likely to loose in the next elections and a right-wing PM will take charge, but it will be forced not to change course drastically regarding China or Palestine or would see mobilizations in the street fast. Spain, if it plays the cards right, could see becoming with more gravitas in Europe.
Fun Fact: Vox, the ultra-right wing party in Spain started in 2014 with a large amount of cash from abroad from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)… yep, because nothing spells Spanish nationalism better than being primarily financed (80% in 2014) by Iranian dissidents that have no money and likely was Israel behind it all. Also, and that is just my personal speculation, the complete and unprecedented blackout last summer and the puzzling track breakage on the fast train were purely accidental too.
Spain will rip some of the benefits since China is moving assembling plants to Spain as we talk after Spain being one more opens to trade from China. For Spaniards will be a smooth transaction moving from German and French brands to Chinese ones. Europe as a whole will still loose the engineering jobs though while continuing blaming Russia and China for all their mostly self-inflicting wounds.
I thought it is highly possible they may had gamed the system at some point, but doubting it less and less by the day… they would have been very consistent for hundreds and hundreds of days! Once you actually installed it, you will realize it is among the most polished yet stable Linux distros there is and has had a very consistent competent team.
Now, I don’ think it has a high popularity at all among newcomers, let alone people on forums (look at the popular KDE variant download per week… 112 vs the ‘rare’ Xfce with 3444). Their base are people that probably are more avid visitors to the legendary Distrowatch than active to these forums, therefore the low visibility to us.
By the way, tried MX KDE and it is really good, I recommend its team stop selling it just as ideal for “old machines”, it is perfect for any one that does not want a rolling release. It is for people that would like Debian but want it more polish without getting into Ubuntu or Cinnamon territory. I would go even further… they should even offer a KDE-advanced version with updated Kernel and KDE (like TUXEDO OS does) and i think they will become a hit! But I understand they may lacking resources for that… offering SystemD and SysVinit must be highly intensive on itself already. I have grown to trust them.