A2 · Elementary
9 min
european politicsdemocracyelectionsgeopolitics
The End of an Era: Hungary Without Orbán
El fin de una era: Hungría sin Orbán
Viktor Orbán loses the Hungarian election after 16 years in power. Fletcher and Octavio dig into Orbán's rise, the state of European democracy, and what his fall actually changes.
Viktor Orbán pierde las elecciones en Hungría después de 16 años en el poder. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre la historia de Orbán, la democracia en Europa y lo que cambia ahora.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el poder | power | Orbán ya no tiene el poder. |
| la democracia | democracy | La democracia es importante en Europa. |
| ya no | not anymore / no longer | Él ya no vive aquí. |
| el gobierno | government | El nuevo gobierno tiene muchos problemas. |
| la libertad | freedom / liberty | La libertad es muy importante para las personas. |
Viktor Orbán is gone.
Sixteen years, and then he's just...
gone.
I want to sit with that for a second, because I'm not sure the world has fully processed what just happened in Hungary.
Sí.
Yes.
Es muy grande.
It's very significant.
Orbán tiene mucho poder en Europa.
Orbán has a lot of power in Europe.
He had.
Past tense.
He lost the election, and now he says he'll give up his seat in Parliament, although he's keeping his grip on Fidesz, the party he built.
Which is its own interesting move.
Orbán no sale.
Orbán doesn't leave.
Orbán espera.
Orbán waits.
El partido es su casa.
The party is his home.
That's a sharp way to put it.
He's stepping out of the building but he's keeping the keys.
So before we get into what comes next, I want to go back, because sixteen years is a long time and I think people forget just how completely he reshaped that country.
Orbán llega en 2010.
Orbán arrives in 2010.
Hungría tiene muchos problemas entonces.
Hungary has many problems at that time.
Right, Hungary was in a rough spot economically after the financial crisis.
And Orbán came in with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which in Hungary essentially means you can rewrite the constitution.
And that is exactly what he did.
Sí.
Yes.
Él cambia la ley.
He changes the law.
Él controla los jueces.
He controls the judges.
The courts, the electoral system, the media.
He packed the constitutional court with loyalists, gerrymandered the electoral districts, and systematically defunded or bought out independent media.
I covered press freedom for years and Hungary became one of the case studies you couldn't ignore.
Los periodistas tienen miedo.
Journalists are afraid.
No es fácil trabajar allí.
It is not easy to work there.
Not easy is an understatement.
By 2021, Reporters Without Borders ranked Hungary 92nd in the world for press freedom.
Ninety-second.
That's below countries you wouldn't expect.
For a European Union member state, that number is almost incomprehensible.
Pero muchos húngaros votan por Orbán.
But many Hungarians vote for Orbán.
¿Por qué?
Why?
That's the question that trips up a lot of Western commentators, honestly.
They look at all the democratic erosion and they think, how does he keep winning?
And the answer is genuinely complicated.
Orbán ayuda a las familias.
Orbán helps families.
Hay dinero para los hijos.
There is money for children.
The family subsidies, yes.
He built one of the most aggressive pro-natalist policies in Europe.
Big cash grants for having children, tax exemptions for mothers with four or more kids, subsidized housing loans.
People felt that in their pockets, and that matters.
Pero ahora la economía de Hungría es mala.
But now Hungary's economy is bad.
Los precios son muy altos.
Prices are very high.
Inflation hit Hungary particularly hard.
At one point in 2023 it was running at over 25 percent, the highest in the EU.
The forint collapsed in value.
And when prices rise faster than wages for years, even loyalists start to reconsider.
Y la oposición gana.
And the opposition wins.
Es una sorpresa grande.
It is a big surprise.
Do you know who won, and what they're actually promising?
Because the opposition in Hungary has had a hard time presenting a coherent face to voters.
It's been fractured for years.
La oposición quiere más libertad.
The opposition wants more freedom.
Y quiere volver a Europa.
And it wants to return to Europe.
Return to Europe.
That phrase carries a lot of weight.
Because under Orbán, Hungary had this deeply strange relationship with the EU.
He took billions in EU structural funds while simultaneously blocking EU policy on Ukraine, on refugees, on the rule of law.
He was the insider who acted like an outsider.
Hungría toma el dinero de Europa.
Hungary takes the money from Europe.
Pero no sigue las reglas.
But it does not follow the rules.
The EU actually froze a significant portion of Hungary's funding over rule-of-law concerns.
Tens of billions of euros sitting there, blocked, while ordinary Hungarians felt the squeeze.
That's the kind of thing that eventually breaks through even the most tightly controlled media environment.
Orbán dice: Europa es el problema.
Orbán says: Europe is the problem.
No es él.
Not him.
Classic playbook.
Find an external enemy, blame Brussels, blame Soros, blame migrants.
He was extraordinarily good at that.
For a long time it worked.
What's interesting is what it means now that it stopped working.
Y Orbán ayuda a Rusia también.
And Orbán helps Russia too.
Eso es un problema grande.
That is a big problem.
His relationship with Putin was something else.
He called himself an illiberal democrat and pointed to Russia as a model of a certain kind of national sovereignty.
Hungary bought Russian gas when others were trying to sanction it.
He blocked EU aid packages to Ukraine multiple times.
For NATO, having Hungary as a member state while Orbán ran it was genuinely awkward.
Orbán habla bien de Putin.
Orbán speaks well of Putin.
Los otros líderes no.
The other leaders do not.
He was essentially running a parallel foreign policy inside an alliance.
You had NATO members sending weapons to Ukraine, and then you had Hungary.
It created real friction, real diplomatic headaches.
If the new government moves Hungary back toward a more conventional Western posture on Russia, that's a meaningful shift in European security.
Ahora Fidesz no tiene el gobierno.
Now Fidesz does not have the government.
Pero Fidesz es grande todavía.
But Fidesz is still large.
Right, and this is the part I keep coming back to.
Orbán resigning from Parliament doesn't mean Fidesz disappears.
He spent sixteen years building institutions, appointing loyalists, embedding the party into the fabric of Hungarian public life.
That doesn't just evaporate because there's a new prime minister.
Los jueces son de Fidesz.
The judges belong to Fidesz.
Los medios también.
The media too.
Todo es difícil de cambiar.
Everything is hard to change.
This is actually the lesson from Poland, which went through something similar.
Law and Justice lost in 2023, and the new government has been fighting ever since to claw back control of the courts and public broadcaster.
It takes years.
Sometimes it takes a generation.
You can win an election and still inherit a system that pushes back on everything you try to do.
La democracia es lenta.
Democracy is slow.
No cambia todo rápido.
Not everything changes fast.
Slow is one word for it.
Painstaking is another.
And in the meantime, Orbán is out there as party leader, keeping Fidesz organized, keeping the base warm, waiting for the new government to stumble.
Which governments inevitably do.
En España hay partidos así también.
In Spain there are parties like this too.
La derecha crece mucho.
The right grows a lot.
Vox, you mean.
And it's not just Spain.
You've got the AfD in Germany, the Rassemblement National in France, the Brothers of Italy actually in government.
Orbán was in some ways the pioneer of this whole movement, the proof of concept that you could take a mainstream conservative party, push it hard to the nationalist right, and keep winning.
Orbán es un modelo para ellos.
Orbán is a model for them.
Ahora pierde.
Now he loses.
¿Es malo para ellos?
Is that bad for them?
That's a genuinely important question.
If the Orbán model fails, does that send a signal to voters in France, in Germany, in Spain, that this kind of politics has a ceiling?
Or do they just say, well, Orbán made specific mistakes, we'll do it better?
I honestly don't know the answer.
La economía es importante.
The economy is important.
Cuando la economía es mala, la gente cambia.
When the economy is bad, people change.
Every authoritarian-adjacent leader learns this eventually.
You can control the courts, you can control the media, you can control the narrative.
But you can't control the price of bread.
When people can't afford to heat their homes, no amount of propaganda holds.
Orbán forgot that, or he ran out of road.
Hungría es libre ahora.
Hungary is free now.
Pero el trabajo es muy difícil.
But the work is very difficult.
Free is a complicated word.
There's an election result, and that's real and that matters.
But freedom is rebuilt slowly, institution by institution, law by law.
Hungary has a long road ahead.
What I'd watch is the Constitutional Court appointments, and whether independent media starts to recover any financial ground.
Those are the real signals.
Orbán dice: yo vuelvo.
Orbán says: I return.
Yo creo que él lo dice en serio.
I think he means it seriously.
[chuckle] I believe him.
Men who've held power that long don't just go quietly into retirement.
He'll be watching, he'll be organizing, and if the new government stumbles on the economy or on migration, he'll be ready to make that case to voters.
This isn't over.
Oye, Fletcher.
Hey, Fletcher.
Antes yo digo 'ya no tiene el gobierno'.
Earlier I said 'ya no tiene el gobierno.' Do you understand 'ya no'?
¿Entiendes 'ya no'?
I caught it.
I actually wrote it down.
'Ya no.' It means 'not anymore,' right?
But I keep wanting to say 'no más' instead and I have a feeling that's wrong.
'No más' es incorrecto aquí.
'No más' is incorrect here.
'Ya no' es la frase correcta.
'Ya no' is the right phrase.
Orbán ya no tiene poder.
Orbán no longer has power.
So 'ya no' is the thing you reach for when something used to be true and now it isn't.
'Ya no tiene poder.' He no longer has power.
That's useful.
That's a phrase I could have used about a dozen times in this conversation.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Antes habla español mal.
Before you spoke Spanish badly.
Ya no.
Not anymore.
Ahora habla mejor.
Now you speak better.
Un poco.
A little.
I'll take a little.
That might be the most generous thing you've said to me in eight years.
Orbán ya no tiene poder.
I'm going to practice that one.
Anyway, Hungary: watch this space.