Ignacio Garriga, the Catalan leader of Vox who has managed to unseat Ortega Smith

Unexpectedly, on October 6, Abascal removed Ortega Smith from his side, whom he continues to call “compadre” and “friend”, relegating him to one of the three vice-presidencies. And he once again opted for Garriga, a dentist who was the son of a recently deceased Spanish woman of Equatorial Guinean origin, Clotilde Vaz de Conceição, and a Catalan father of Flemish descent, Rafael Garriga Kuijpers.

However, the Catalan leader, who has four children, has never shown any qualms about charging against the “illegal migratory invasion” and betting on immediate deportations. “I don’t care if they are Chinese, white or black, as long as they come to Spain in an orderly manner,” he defended in his land.

He also joined the denunciations about “multiculturalism” that, in the opinion of the extreme right, is promoting “the rise of Islamic fundamentalism” in Catalonia, a speech that culminates in Vox with the theory of the “population replacement” of the true Spaniards by people immigrants. However, both Garriga and the leaders of the Abascal formation deny that these approaches are “xenophobic” and “racist”. “If Vox were racist or had something against foreigners, I couldn’t be here,” the party’s new General Secretary has maintained in several interviews.

His beginnings in the PP

Garriga’s political career actually began in the PP, at the hands of his mother, a dedicated and well-known party activist in Sant Cugat (Barcelona). His son joined the New Generations in 2005, but shortly afterwards he resigned because he did not agree with the timorous turn that the formation adopted in its first approaches to the fight against abortion or gay marriage, changes that in his opinion they were excessively “liberal” and clashed head-on with his ultra-Catholic and extremely conservative ideas. Within the party he is very close to Opus Dei.

In 2010 Garriga ran for the Catalan regional elections with Alternativa de Govern, the short-lived party of former PP leader Montserrat Nebrera, running as number 18 on the list for Barcelona, ​​but failed to win a seat. Four years later, she joined Vox after recognizing that she identified 100% with her program and with her visceral rejection of the independence movement. Ignacio Garriga is the cousin of Juan Garriga Domenech –former leader of the xenophobic Platform for Catalonia (PxC), who is accused of various hate crimes, as are several members of the Vox leadership in Barcelona–, to whom they attribute dangerous neo-Nazi friendships . In fact, he has given talks in places like the Empel Club in Barcelona, ​​successor to the Casal Tramuntana, a meeting point for young people with fascist ideology.

The motion of censure against Sánchez

Since joining Vox, Garriga has been one of the party’s leaders in Catalonia who has been mentored by Jorge Buxadé, current national spokesman and head of the European delegation. In fact, now there are those who point out that his rise is actually due to Buxadé’s desire to control the organization through Garriga, whose figure within the far-right formation did not stand out too much until Abascal placed him at the top of the list in 2019 for Barcelona in the April 2019 elections. He won the seat, which he revalidated again in November of that same year, after the electoral repetition.

His role as a national deputy passed discreetly until, to the surprise of many, in October 2020, Abascal entrusted him to defend the motion of censure that Vox presented in Congress against Pedro Sánchez. By then he had already been designated as a candidate for the Generalitat de Catalunya by the National Executive Committee (CEN). His protagonism in that debate was a real boost for the Catalan campaign since he was the least known candidate in those elections and started with little political background as a leader of Vox.

The result was that at that appointment with the polls, in February 2021, his candidacy won 11 seats. Vox became the fourth force in the Catalan Parliament, far surpassing Ciudadanos, which sank (it went from 36 seats to 6) and the PP, which with its only three representatives has ended up being residual in Catalonia. However, Garriga’s role as spokesperson for Vox in Parliament, in this first year of the legislature, has not been very significant either.

Joy for the fall of Ortega Smith

His appointment as the new secretary general was also a surprise within Vox. But there have been many territorial leaders who have celebrated his arrival and have welcomed him. Especially since it was a legion within Vox that wanted the fall of Ortega Smith, whose management has been highly criticized for the mess that reigned in many of the territories a few months before the municipal and regional elections of 2023, crucial for the party.

Now the preparation of the electoral lists is in the hands of his successor, Garriga, a leader who, despite his extreme ideas, displays polite manners before the cameras and displays a moderate discourse, very different from that of Ortega Smith. This was demonstrated on October 7 in his debut in office, when he appeared at a press conference at the national headquarters of the formation on Bambú Street in Madrid.

The new secretary general was supported, among others, by Iván Espinosa de los Monteros and Rocío Monasterio, but his predecessor did not attend his debut, about whom Garriga had kind words stating that he had taken a “generous step aside” to dedicate himself body and soul to “winning Madrid” as a municipal candidate.

Garriga stressed that Vox “is stronger and more united than ever” and blamed “palatial intrigues” and “orchestrated campaigns” that seek to “undermine” his party all the interpretations that have been made about this important change in the dome of the far-right formation. As the new general secretary of Vox, he charged that he will make it compatible with the spokesperson in the Parliament of Catalonia, Ignacio Garriga still has his service record to write.