He has been at the head of Vox for more than ten years and Santiago Abascal has been unable to retain at his side many of the leaders who in 2014 helped him in the birth of the far-right formation that he founded after leaving the PP. Abascal launched the new party together with a group of former popular leaders, such as Alejo Vidal-Quadras, the former UCD minister Ignacio Camuñas, the philosopher José Luis González de Quirón and José Antonio Ortega Lara, the prison official kidnapped by ETA, among others. many people who gradually joined the project.
Except for Ortega Lara, none of those founders are now with Abascal. Just a few weeks ago, the former deputy for Madrid Juan Luis Steegmann, the doctor who defended the anti-COVID vaccines in the midst of the pandemic against the deniers of his own party and who was another of the first leaders of Vox who helped its foundation.
As explained in a letter, which was published by Libertad Digital, Steegmann decided to leave Vox due to its approach to “neofalangism” and its “illiberal” and “anti-scientific” drift that was embodied in Jorge Buxadé, who has once again been elected as a member of the European Parliament in last Sunday’s elections. In his letter he explained that he made the decision after listening to the speeches of more than a dozen far-right leaders at the so-called “patriotic party” of Vox, ‘Europa Viva24’, in which, along with Abascal, the guest star was the Argentine president Javier Milei, who called Pedro Sánchez’s wife “corrupt.”
“For years, Vox has been doing away with the most liberal part of its program, and its deputies. What’s more, he has continued a night trip that is close to neo-Falangism,” stated the former deputy, later accusing Buxadé of maintaining an “anti-scientific” and “insufferable” position, mentioning in his speech “disparaging vaccines”, something that, As Steegmann pointed out, it made it “impossible for him to vote for Vox” in the European elections. His departure did not merit a single comment from the new management.
The first to abandon ship
The first to abandon Abascal was precisely his friend and former PP colleague Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who broke with Vox shortly after failing as the head of the list in the 2014 European elections, a campaign that financed the Iranian resistance. Along with him –in addition to the former UCD minister Ignacio Camuñas, who also disappeared from the founding group–, the philosopher José Luis González de Quirós left. They both sent a letter to Abascal, published by ABC, explaining the reasons for their goodbye, which were none other than their disillusionment because they believed that the extreme right party was not capable of fighting on its own against “left-wing populism” and “the historical and traditional two-party system.” Vidal Quadras suffered an attack in November last year that he attributes to the “regime of the Iranian ayatollahs,” after which he appears to have reconciled with the leader of Vox.
Shortly after, another of the founders, the Valencian leader and ultra agitator Cristina Seguí, left after denouncing an internal case of corruption. Those were years in which far-right groups fought with little success to achieve representation in the main autonomies while paradoxically advocating for their disappearance. And at the same time it was working to expand throughout the national territory, a goal that Vox took four years to achieve.
Their first success came in December 2018 when they managed to enter the Andalusian Parliament for the first time with 12 deputies. Two months earlier, Abascal had managed to fill the Vistalegre Palace in Madrid in a great event that served as the starting signal for that institutional takeoff, which had its high point in the second electoral call of 2019, held in November, when Vox managed to rise of the 24 seats obtained in Congress in April, to 52 deputies. In May of that same year, the party also managed to enter almost all the regional parliaments as well as a good number of City Councils.
The joy, however, did not last long. In the following Andalusian regional elections, held in June 2022, the far-right party did not achieve its objective of winning a vice presidency in the Junta de Andalucía. The brand new candidate in those elections, Macarena Olona – who had left her seat for Granada in Congress and reluctantly accepted that challenge –, obtained two more certificates of the dozen they already had in Andalusia. But the leader of the PP, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, capitalized on the disappearance of Ciudadanos, his former government partner, and achieved the absolute majority. The failure in those elections unleashed the war with the former deputy and former secretary general of the parliamentary group, who was another of the important Vox figures in planting Abascal and leaving the party.
Olona left the party in August 2022 after resigning from his role in the Andalusian Parliament, citing “health reasons.” But he soon brought to the surface the deep discomfort that he had been accumulating against his former colleagues and, more specifically, against Abascal himself. In fact, shortly after, on Jordi Évole’s program, he freely dismissed him as an “alpha male” and raised suspicions of corruption against the group. Likewise, he revealed that he had suffered serious attacks from people “who praised Hitler and who were close to Vox.” “They’ve done the wrong thing with me,” he said.
Olona had previously warned that “a party that is exclusive” could not be “an alternative to anything. Much less about Government.” The former deputy ended up launching a new project, ‘Walking Together’, with which she tried to try her luck in the general elections of June 23, 2023, advanced by Pedro Sánchez after the poor results of the PSOE in the regional and municipal elections in May of that year. But she did not get representation.
Precisely, those elections of July 2023 were the biggest setback for Vox since in them the extreme right party lost no less than 19 deputies, going from 52 to 33. The internal crisis, which had been brewing for several months and had Abascal and some disappointments – like that of Olona – then broke out in all its harshness and the list of abandonments began to grow.
The earthquake of Espinosa’s march
It includes one of the historical and most emblematic leaders of Vox: Iván Espinosa de los Monteros. His unexpected resignation as parliamentary spokesperson, amid rumors that he was going to be relegated from office, convulsed the party. Although in his appearance without questions in the Congress of Deputies he claimed “personal and family reasons” for leaving, he was internally vox populi the discomfort that had been accumulating after being removed by Abascal from daily decision-making.
The preparation of the electoral candidacies for that 23J without being consulted was the last straw that, according to those who know him, broke the camel’s back of his patience. His departure uncovered the pulse and the struggle for power that existed between the two souls that coexist in Vox: the sector considered more “liberal”, which Espinosa would lead, and the most traditionalist and ultra-Catholic, represented by the then first vice president, Jorge Buxadé. , who began in politics in several Falange candidacies and is linked to Opus Dei.
Since his resignation, Espinosa de los Monteros has not appeared at any party event. Instead, he has been seen meeting with Alvise Pérez, the ultra agitator who has presented himself to the European elections with a platform tailored to him, ‘The party is over’, with which he has won no less than three deputies in Brussels.
The seat left empty by Espinosa was Steegmann’s turn to occupy, but he refused. The list ran and Carla Toscano, the anti-feminist deputy, entered Congress, who surprisingly also resigned from her act shortly after with the excuse that she wanted to dedicate herself fully to her position as deputy spokesperson for Vox in the Madrid City Council alongside Javier Ortega. Smith.
By then the internal unrest in the formation was already palpable. He had been brewing since that failure in the general elections after which the hidden criticism of the leader was a clamor. So much so that Abascal, aware that for the first time his re-election in office could be in danger, decided to bring forward the party’s General Assembly by surprise and shield himself.
Avoid an alternative candidacy
The conclave was held on January 27 of this year when it officially fell in March, a date after the Galician elections brought forward by the popular Alfonso Rueda to February, and the prospects there were not at all promising either. Abascal did not want to wait for another possible failure at the polls due to the fear that the critical sector of the party, which had been growing since the resignation of the parliamentary spokesperson, would question his continuity in office.
With the unexpected advance of that congress, Abascal neutralized the possibility of an alternative candidacy being put together, as it had already begun to be speculated that Javier Ortega Smith, who had questioned the management’s strategy and had positioned himself next to Espinosa, was trying to do. after slamming the door on training. As suspected, Vox did not obtain representation in Galicia but Abascal did manage to remain in the presidency of the extreme right party, which by an overwhelming majority confirmed him in office with a renewed leadership that included the territorial leaders and also Ortega Smith. .
Although the re-elected leader boasted in that conclave of “unity” and blamed “press hoaxes” for the Vox crisis, two days later reality denied him: the party imploded in the Balearic Islands and was on the verge of derailing the new legislature of the PP government, a party that the extreme right supported after the regional elections. The rebellion on the part of the Balearic leadership has been controlled, but no one is putting their hand on the fire to prevent the crisis from breaking out again.
The casualties continued and in April 2024, the Vox deputy for Cádiz, Blanca Armario, presented her resignation as president of the party in the province, theoretically to dedicate herself fully to her work in Madrid.
The manager’s departure
Another of the resignations that the party tried to silence was that of the manager and economic brain, Juan José Aizcorbe, which materialized in October 2023. According to what El País published, the former deputy had presented his resignation just in the same week in which elDiario.es had revealed that Vox had spent almost seven million euros over four years to the private foundation Disenso, chaired by Abascal.
A few days before it had also been known that the Court of Auditors, in its annual report, stated that there was “uncertainty” regarding 332,548.09 euros that Vox received through ATMs. The supervisory body expressed its doubts about whether part of said income “corresponds to donations and not the sale of products”, as the extreme right group said, which would violate the law on party financing “as possible parties have not been identified.” donors. The Vox management tried to separate Aizcorbe’s departure from both news items, but the sources consulted by this newsroom insisted that they were the triggers for his dismissal.
Despite all these setbacks, Vox’s new management believes that internal waters have calmed down after having managed to maintain the situation in both the Basque Country and Catalonia. And although they expected to grow much more in the European Parliament, the fact of having obtained two more seats than the four they had until now makes them think that no one will dare to start another fire in Vox now. A wish that remains to be verified.
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