If you think the Westminster general election is hotting up in Northern Ireland over the issue of pacts and alliances, then there’s a very bitter election lesson to be learned from this month’s national election outcome in Spain.

I’ve just returned from Southern Spain after chatting to the ex-pats community about the outcome of the country’s fourth contest in as many years.

As predicted, as with the last general election earlier this year in April, the socialists were returned as the largest party with 120 seats in the 350-seat parliament. The PSOE lost only three seats, this time after failing to secure an overall majority and even a coalition pact from the April poll.

The big winners were the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox. The PP saw its tally of seats rise from an April outcome of 66 to a November tally of 88.

However, the biggest shock was that Vox doubled its representation from a marginal tally of 24 in April to 52 this month, leaving the hard-right movement as the third largest party in the Spanish lower house.

“How is the European trend of gains by the far right a warning to Northern Ireland parties?” you may well ask. After all, in spite of numerous attempts by English-based extreme right-wing parties to gain a foothold in Northern Ireland, their bids have always crashed and burned electorally.

For example, although in the 2009 European election the British National Party (BNP) won two MEPs, the BNP has never secured even one councillor in Northern Ireland.

The list of far right parties ending up in the electoral or organisational dustbin in Northern Ireland includes the National Front, White Nationalist Party and the British Peoples’ Party.

While the rapid rise of Vox over just seven months can be attributed to an anti-immigration message and protest against the Catalan independence movement in Spain, until this month’s poll, the far-right in Spain had always remained a fringe movement in the country since the death of former dictator Francisco Franco in the 70s.

Even the recent decision to move Franco’s body cannot be seen as a decisive motivating factor in the rise of the far-right in Spain.

Speaking to many ex-pats, their conclusion was the inability of the conservative PP to maintain its position as a broad church of the Right. Until the most recent election, the PP had always been able to attract right-wing supporters from both the centre-right and the more extreme end of the spectrum.

However, the PP decided it would chase the so-called ‘middle ground’ and become more liberal in its bid to overtake the PSOE. The result of the PP liberalising was to drive its traditional hard-right supporters into the arms of Vox.

However, it should be emphasised that many socially conservative voters may not necessarily agree with the entire platform of Vox, but that they have turned to the Far Right party as they do not feel as if they have been listened to by traditional Centre Right parties, such as the PP.

In Northern Ireland, this should be a warning to some existing parties. Since the centrist Alliance ‘bounce’ in both the local government and European elections in May, there has been an almost hypnotic fixation with the need for parties to be liberal and seek out the so-called ‘centre ground’.

Among the unionist parties, both the DUP and UUP are almost politically unrecognisable movements since the Ian Paisley and Jim Molyneaux eras. Both parties are now trying to present themselves as supposedly either liberal or progressive.

Compared to the Paisley senior’s obvious Christian fundamentalist era, what must be noted is the DUP’s failure (and, indeed, perceived lack of serious effort) to prevent changes to abortion and same-sex marriage legislation in Northern Ireland this year,  and the clear change of tone of the UUP under the new leadership of South Antrim MLA Steve Aiken.

But as with Spain, is there the danger that if existing parties are perceived to be too liberal a movement in terms of both ideology and policies, could it open the door to the formation of a more hardline right-wing movement?

Some may point to the fact this is not the case currently in Unionism as neither the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) or the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) have made a significant breakthrough in Northern Ireland; both remain fringe movements. Likewise, it must be stressed that neither the TUV nor UKIP can be classified as ‘Far Right’ in the literal political definition of the term as ‘fascist’ or ‘neo-Nazi’.

Of the 18 Northern Ireland Westminster seats, 11 are currently held by pro-Union MPs and seven by abstentionist Sinn Féin members. However, if unionists lose MPs, perhaps as a result of new anti-Brexit pacts, could it spark a backlash against a liberal agenda by grassroots unionism and loyalism?

Among nationalist parties, will the Remain experiment result in anti-Brexit MPs who will take their seats, or could we see an outcome that adds momentum to the right-wing pro-life agenda among nationalist voters?

Even if the SDLP can recover seats that it lost to Sinn Féin, there is the real possibility that many Catholic voters will have to face the decision of what matters most to them: faith in a religious pro-life stance, or party loyalty?

The temptation to rebrand themselves as ‘liberal’, or at least less conservative, could well backfire in the long-term on existing parties driving their traditional hardline factions into new parties, such as a Vanguard-style movement in Unionism and Aontú in nationalism.

And clearly it must also be stressed that these shifts would not imply the growth of a ‘Far Right’ movement, but could fragment an already fragile political system further. Similarly, while this election may be dominated by Brexit and the Union, that’s not to say that voters don’t care about other issues, such as health, education, farming, pensions, employment, and the environment.

As the various candidates hit the doorsteps selling their ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ manifestos to attract the supposed ‘centre ground’ and ‘middle ground voters’, they would do well to take note of what happened in Spain when the hunt for the middle ground backfired on the PP and boosted Vox.

In contrast, it must equally be made clear that different voters will want different things from their various parties – and factions within those parties. It’s not that all candidates should stay away from the ‘centre ground’ (some voters have always been, or are, there), but if all are perceived to be heading there, then that’s when a backlash may emerge.

If everyone occupies the so-called ‘middle ground’, it clearly leaves the political ‘wings’ or ‘extremes’ open to occupy, manipulate, or take advantage of.