Climate change denier, very critical of the “payouts” and aid that the Government grants to young people and vulnerable groups; detractor of any measure that benefits immigration, scourge of the leaders of the process, whom he considers “criminals”…. José María Figaredo (Gijón, September 1988), fits perfectly into the profile that likes Vox, a party to which this 35-year-old Asturian lawyer joined in 2013 and of which he has been a deputy for Asturias since 2019, having just arrived in his thirties.
Figaredo pretends to know what he is talking about, gestures with coaching manners and categorically recites absolutely false data. Nothing different from the profiles of young neoliberals that flood the networks. But from his seat in Congress this Wednesday he perplexed deputies from all parties by ensuring that workers who earn the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) have to pay 54% of IPPF, when in reality they are exempt from paying taxes. The response of the first vice president of the Government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, was an unprecedented disgrace.
Until this week, when he has become the subject of memes and ridicule in social gatherings, José María Figaredo was one of the most unknown deputies on the extreme right bench, despite the fact that his name was strongly suggested to replace Iván Espinosa de los Monteros after his resignation from his position as Vox spokesperson in Congress, officially, “for personal reasons.” However, to his chagrin, he had to settle for continuing as secretary general of the parliamentary group, a responsibility that he had assumed after another abrupt departure, that of Macarena Olona, from the extreme right party.
Its origins must be placed within one of those lineages that have not experienced hardships in the last century. His grandfather was an important mining businessman and his father dedicated himself to the publishing and printing business and later to the hotel business. José María, an only son, studied at the Jesuists, at the San Ignacio School in Oviedo before moving to Madrid, where he lived at the Elías Ahúja University Residence Hall, which in 2022 was the center of controversy due to the sexist chants and shouts that were uttered. a group of his students from the windows against the women residents of another college.
Figaredo then studied Law at the Pontifical University of Comillas, except for the sixth year of his degree, which he spent at North Carolina State University with a student exchange program. To his degree in Law in 2011 he added a year later another in Business Administration and Management. As a lawyer he has specialized in arbitration working at the González-Bueno & Asociados law firm.
In 2013, when he was not yet 25 years old, he joined Vox and has presided over the party in Asturias since last year. In 2019 he obtained his certificate of deputy for Asturias, which he has already revalidated three times.
Figaredo is Rodrigo Rato's nephew, a circumstance that some political rivals have reminded him of, which has made him stir in his seat. One of the first to do so was the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, with whom he has had strong clashes for some time in the Wednesday control sessions.
Among the most popular, one from April 2021, also due to Figaredo's fight against Sánchez's fiscal policy, although in that case his question was about the wealth and inheritance tax that the autonomous communities had to collect. The accusations that he launched in his speech, ensuring that the Spanish taxpayer who pays taxes sees how these “are destined to pay for whores and coke of the councilors or presidents” of the PSOE Government, made Montero jump, who snapped: “You He is the nephew of Mr. Rato and he has the nerve to get up here to talk about issues that have to do with corruption.” Faced with the commotion that her comment caused in the extreme right bench, the minister replied: “You have a jaw of glass after the atrocities you pose.” The deputy, very upset, insulted him for “lying to his family,” something he considered “unnecessary.” “He wants me to pay for my parents' inheritance and he must want me to pay for the rights and wrongs of my ancestors. If an uncle of mine makes mistakes, should I pay for them? However, if my father obtains wealth, I cannot inherit it,” he defended himself then.
The truth is that it is a rare week that the far-right parliamentarian does not question Montero like a hammer on the same issue: the tax increase that he claims that his department mercilessly applies to Spaniards and that the Asturian deputy has come to qualify as “fiscal sadism”. He did so in December 2023. “His taxes have been a pain. It seems that they are going to raise taxes more and that they will do so to the working classes because they are the ones who ultimately bear the cost of their party,” Figaredo told him, while Montero replied: “Have you looked at the data? So he doesn't know how to read them.” “Collection increased by 5%. I regret that his party has to do politics at the expense of confronting territories or denying the freedom of the LGTBI community because the data does not support his thesis. “They use lies and false news to feed their theses and they do not stand on their own,” he concluded.
Last Wednesday, during the last control session of the Government, Figaredo returned to the fray and with his usual self-confidence reproached the minister for the fact that workers who receive the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) pay more than half of it in Personal Income Tax, a completely fake. “Social justice? It depends on who you ask. A Spaniard who earns 15,876 euros, the minimum wage, the Treasury and the State take 8,400, 54%,” said the deputy, which forced Montero to expose him by reminding him that these salaries are exempt from taxation due to a modification of the Government . “I don't know if it's bad faith or ignorance.” “How does a salary of 15,800 euros pay 8,000 in personal income tax in Spain?” He questioned him. “Who gave you that information? The same ones who give the data to the PP? ”He ironized.
Despite its blunder, which embarrassed practically the entire chamber, Vox published minutes later a video of Figaredo giving taxation lessons under the insistent premise that “the Government steals from us!”, a video that, according to the party, is extreme. right “has gone viral” on the networks.
In 2015, according to the newspaper El Plural, Figaredo wrote a controversial article against Syrian refugees in a blog called El Club de los Viernes (closely linked to Vox and Hazte Oír) in which he rhetorically asked if in Spain “we are afraid of coming face to face with the diseases that generate the wave of refugees.” That same year he also doubted the authorship of 11M. In a tweet from the Vox leader that the media captured and reproduced, one could read: “There are those who continue to cling to the Asturian dynamite. Let them talk to someone who worked at the Conchita Mine.”
In Congress, the annual salary of this deputy who is allergic “to little money” exceeds 104,000 euros. As can be seen in your declaration of assets updated in October 2023 (in the first, registered in August of that year, he 'forgot' to declare several homes), Figaredo reveals that Vox pays him 9,600 euros as general secretary of the parliamentary group; He claims to earn 13,332 euros as a lawyer and another 720 euros for teaching at a private university.
In addition, he declares that he has six homes, three in Madrid and another three in Asturias – four of them with a garage and the result of “inheritances” – and an industrial warehouse in Asturias, also inherited. He is the owner of three motorcycles of different displacements, almost all of them acquired in 2021 and a Volkswagen Polo, also from 2021. He has two outstanding mortgage loans, the first requested in 2018 for 304,000 euros, of which he owes 252,400; and another in 2022 at 50%, of 340,000 of which he has returned 334,165 euros, the year in which he requested another personal loan “at 50%” of 35,000 euros of which he still owes 30,000. Figaredo declares that he paid nearly 27,500 euros in personal income tax in the last financial year. The balance of all of the above is what Figaredo and his people call “fiscal hell.”
