Meloni’s triumph in Italy catches Vox in the midst of a crisis with Olona

This is how he revealed it in an interview with Canal Sur -and later in a huddle with journalists in Seville-, where he has advanced that he even has “sufficient financing for it”, although he considers that promoting another party now would be “absolute recklessness and irresponsibility” since it would be “further fracturing the political board at a time when Spain needs unity”.

Her intention, according to those who know her, is to “sow nervousness in Vox” after the parliamentary spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, closed the door on her possible return to the party: “So far we have come. It is the end of the road”, Espinosa sentenced from Congress in response to Olona’s calls to meet with Abascal himself to see if they continued “walking together” after their numerous disagreements.

“She is deified and ready for anything.” “She says that she is the only one who can save Spain,” say some former members of Vox with whom Olona has contacted these days to probe them and see the possibilities of bringing them together in her future project.

The former candidate for the Junta de Andalucía landed this Monday in Seville to star in a lunch-discussion sponsored by the former banker Mario Conde, convicted and imprisoned for the Banesto case, a banking entity that he presided over and looted. It is not the only time that she has allowed herself to be photographed with him, which has sparked much speculation given the influences within business and economic sectors that, despite his career, the former banker continues to have. Days before leaving Vox, she had allowed herself to be photographed in another act with Conde, something that did not sit well with Abascal.

His stop this Monday in the Andalusian capital is part of the tour that Olona has undertaken through several provinces of Spain after finishing the Camino de Santiago with the excuse of giving conferences on legal issues, visits that he takes advantage of to return to the media spotlight.

In a huddle with journalists, Olona has revealed that a party “that does not yet exist” offered her to be its candidate for the autonomous elections for Valencia in May 2023. But she rejected the invitation “immediately” alleging that “it is due to Andalusia” : “It was something I couldn’t do, because I couldn’t look Andalusians in the face,” he replied, although he has revealed that many people are now asking him to stand for election. She has also joked with journalists, recalling the dust that arose in those regional elections to the Andalusian Government due to her registration in Salobreña (Granada), assuring that on this occasion it would be “easier” for her to accept that offer since it has born in Alicante. But Olona prefers to wait and see what happens in that double appointment of the municipal and regional ones that, according to her, she has said, are going to be “an indicator or thermometer” of what could happen to Vox in the general ones.

The former leader of the extreme right-wing party gave a conference last Friday at the University of Murcia, which had to change location after not obtaining the relevant permits and after the attacks suffered by those who were protesting against another conference she gave in Granada. At the end of that act, she went to dinner with the rebellious Murcian deputies of the Abascal party, a group led by Juan José Liarte. These leaders were expelled from Vox but had to be reinstated by court decision, so they continue to appear as Vox parliamentarians although they do not agree with the party’s guidelines and act freely.

At that dinner, Olona informed them of his intentions to wait until after the appointment with the polls in May 2023 to promote his own project. As this newsroom has learned, Olona also promised them that he would support the campaign of all those who no longer feel represented by the far-right formation. Those same sources maintain that the former deputy has also sounded out critics of the PP through the party’s former secretary general in the Pablo Casado stage, Teodoro García Egea, who is from Murcia.

Meloni, Olona’s inspiration

The truth is that the victory of the candidate of the Brothers of Italy and the advance of far-right parties in other countries such as Switzerland and Sweden, have given their Spanish counterparts airs just when many polls gave Vox a stagnation that they were now beginning to overcome.

But Meloni’s triumph in Italy has a detrimental side for Vox. The leader of the Italian extreme right left the formation in which she was a member in 2012 due to differences with the leadership – in which Silvio Berlusconi and Angelino Alfano were present – ​​and founded a new party with which she has now won the elections. Comparisons with the path that Olona has taken are inevitable. She herself has published this Monday an article in The Independent titled ‘Giorgia, you are inspiration’.

Hence, the internal crisis unleashed by Olona, ​​a woman who has managed to stand out within the formation to the detriment of other leaders of the leadership –such as Javier Ortega Smith, whom Olona has pointed out for having maneuvered against her– is causing great concern in vox.

At this point, the open war between Olona and Vox is no longer hidden. She herself qualified last week some reactions that she has heard in her party about her desire to return to the policy of authentic “meat grinding machinery”. She now also veiledly accuses her classmates of being behind Twitter accounts dedicated to “harassing her and discrediting her.”