Sure, there were some exceptions like Mitterrand in France, Felipe Gonzáles in Spain and Mário Soares in Portugal, but the turn from the 1980s to the 1990s was a very good time to the right. It was the time of Bush Sr, Thatcher, Kohl, many neoliberal presidents in Latin America, and the end of the communist bloc.
But the mainstream right was doing very well that time, the far right was still very small. Bush Sr was a social democrat if you compare him to Donald Trump. Kohl (CDU) was the German chancellor, but there was not such thing like the AfD that time.
In Brazil in 1989, the right-wing candidate Fernando Collor defeated Lula in a close election. But at that time, Lula was really left-wing, and Collor consider himself a centrist, because "right" was an ugly word in Brazil that time. Nowadays, "left" is an ugly word. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro has 15% in the polls. We could not imagine this in 1989.
The far-left became slightly bigger in the 2010s, we can observe examples like Sanders, Melenchon, Linke, Podemos, Syriza and PSOL, but the increase of the far-left was much smaller than the disaster of the center-left.
At least, the Vatican moved to the left. Pope John Paul II was much more conservative than Pope Francis.
A small correction regarding Mário Soares. He was PM only between 1983 and 1985. The 80's and 90's in Portugal were dominated, essentially, by Cavaco Silva (PSD) who served as PM between 1985 and 1995.
