As Spain goes to the polls again, rightwing politicians are counting on anti-foreigner sentiment to win votes

Santiago Abascal’s least favourite neighbours sit – young and bored – on benches outside their temporary home, their coats zipped up against the cold of a Madrid November.

On the other side of the fence, beneath the plane trees, the people of Hortaleza go about their business, pushing buggies, walking dogs and casting the occasional glance at the reception centre for menas, or unaccompanied foreign minors.

If the centre has long been infamous locally, it acquired national notoriety last week when Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, singled it out in a TV debate before Sunday’s general election.

“I live in a working-class Madrid neighbourhood – Hortaleza,” he said. “And every time I’m on the street – and there’s a menas centre there – I run into women who come and tell me that the police tell them not to wear their jewellery on the street; and mothers who are worried that their daughters are coming home late and are scared of being assaulted.”

Neither Vox’s messaging nor its targets have been hard to make out in the last days of the campaign. In Monday’s debate, Abascal falsely suggested that 70% of gang rapes in Spain were committed by foreigners.

Earlier the same day, Rocío Monasterio, Vox’s leader in Madrid, descended on the gates of another centre for unaccompanied minors, in Seville, arguing that menas made the streets unsafe and posed “a serious problem in our neighbourhoods”.

Monasterio’s husband, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, a Vox spokesman, joined in the following day, claiming that foreigners were three times more likely to commit rape than Spaniards. If polls are to be believed, the party’s strategy – less dog whistle and more canine klaxon – seems to be paying off. Vox’s defence of what it sees as traditional Spanish values, bolstered by its uncompromising stance on Catalan independence, puts it in a position to finish third in Spain’s fourth general election in as many years. Not bad for a party that won its first seats in congress less than seven months ago.

Even more notable has been its effect on its rightwing rivals, the conservative People’s party (PP) and the centre-right Citizens party. Both shifted further right before April’s election, hoping to compete with Vox, and both have enlisted the support of Abascal’s grouping to win power in Andalucía and Madrid.

The new triple-right – unaffectionately known by some as the trifachito (facha being slang for fascist) – has filled the political space that used to be the sole territory of the PP.

A recent cover of the satirical magazine El Jueves showed Vox, the PP and Citizens emerging from General Franco’s grave in the Valley of the Fallen, with the PP leader Pablo Casado crying: “Ha ha! We are the true remains of Franco!”

Abascal appeared to acknowledge the party’s inspiration during the debate, when he paraphrased the fascist philosopher Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, saying: “Only the rich can permit themselves the luxury of not having a homeland.”

The party went on to address the question of homelands within Spain on Thursday. In a symbolic proposal backed by Citizens and the PP in Madrid’s regional parliament, Vox called for a ban “of separatist parties that threaten the unity of Spain”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vox supporters hear messages about the homeland. Photograph: Óscar del Pozo/AFP/Getty Images

Vox also has a blacklist of media outlets it views as critical and bans them from its offices and events. They include the newspaper El País, radio network Cadena Ser and the online newspaper Eldiario.es.

The acting prime minister and socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, was not slow to acknowledge the parallels with the past. “Fixing on homosexuals, blaming women for gender-based violence, suggesting a ban on political parties – all that has a name that doesn’t need to be spelt out,” he said.

Like most rightwing populist parties, Vox delights in provoking outrage by spewing provocative messages regardless of their veracity. But for many, the attacks on unaccompanied migrant children are repellent at best and dangerous at worst. Emilio Delgado, a member of the Madrid regional parliament for the leftwing Más Madrid party, points out that the Hortaleza centre is desperately overcrowded and under-resourced.

“The kids there are fighting over who gets a mattress so they don’t have to sleep on the floor,” he said. “That’s happening in a public facility run by the richest regional government in Spain. There are 70 or 80 or 100 kids there when there should only be 30 or 40. That obviously brews conflict between the kids themselves and for staff and neighbours.”

The centre’s residents have also been attacked twice in a fortnight by people armed with oars and clubs.

Delgado acknowledges that some of the young people cause problems in the neighbourhood but said he was disgusted by Abascal’s words. “I get along fine with politicians with whom I disagree on a lot of things, but it’s really hard to do that with Vox when they’re painting targets on the chests of very vulnerable boys and girls,” he said. “They’re crossing all the red lines, and the PP and Citizens are along for the ride.”

José Miguel Aragón, who has been working with homeless young people in Hortaleza for 30 years as part of the Olivar association, also admits there is a problem. Four years ago, his mother had a necklace torn from her throat in the area. But he argues that the current thefts and robberies are nothing compared with the “heroin years” of the 1970s and 1980s when drug disputes in Hortaleza were settled with knives and pistols.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Santiago Abascal speaks in Santander on 1 November. Photograph: Ander Gillenea/AFP/Getty

“This is a problem that’s been going on for quite a few years,” he said. With the centre overwhelmed, some young people had taken to sleeping on the streets to avoid the conflicts and overcrowding, while others escaped by sniffing glue. “It’s a lack of care: lots of these kids are cold and hungry and have been on the streets for hours.”

After the economic crisis, and with the rise of Vox, Aragón said, old xenophobic narratives had begun to resurface. And some agendas, he added, were better served by demonising people and focusing on problems rather than accepting responsibility.“There are people in this neighbourhood who are helping, by giving boxing lessons and organising football matches,” he said. “There are people doing all that but other people are interested in telling a different story.

“What we’re talking about here is adolescent kids who are bored, alone and have no future. That normally means things are going to happen. It would be odd if they didn’t.”