It doesn’t matter what you do, but how you do it. This is a maxim that is useful in politics. When you have to make a momentous decision that is not without risk, it is best to get the method right. Don’t seem desperate or vengeful. Don’t pretend that you have been fooled like an idiot, because then you look like an idiot. Be firm, but don’t seem like a fanatic. It doesn’t matter how many examples are given. It seems that Vox has not lived up to expectations in any of them.
The real Frankenstein governments have been those of the PP and Vox in several autonomous communities. They have not lasted even a year. After the elections in May 2023, the far-right party was not willing to give away its support again and had the same in mind for the general elections in July. It wanted to form coalition cabinets to show that it was a party that could govern and condition the Popular Party. Faced with the first serious difficulty, it has reacted like a drugged elephant, charging from one side to the other and also showing its vulnerability.
A stupid way to break up a government is to do so over an issue where the differences between two parties are well known. Knowing how to manage them is a requirement in a coalition government. On the migration issue, the PP’s position is to reveal as little as possible. It appears to be willing to comply with its legal obligations in relation to immigrant minors, but then several of its regional governments violated the 2023 agreement in order not to fulfill their part and partially alleviate the situation in the Canary Islands and Ceuta. From time to time, Feijóo makes alarmist statements not very different from those of Vox. When the PSOE proposes establishing a system to regularize the distribution on agreed bases, the PP completely refuses. It is more practical to use these minors to wear down the government.
Vox behaves as if each of these minors were a threat to the security of all of Spain. It is a racist position, as well as bizarre. The PP prefers to move little by little, never sign an agreement that can be delayed and put on a face as if it is thinking about the future of Spain (mind you, only thinking). Vox is betting on everything and with that attitude a Government does not last long.
However many differences there may be between the two parties, as Vox now says, there are issues on which they almost completely agree. As an example, on Thursday they approved a “law of concord” in the Valencian Parliament that replaces the autonomous historical memory law. Its ability to create concord is null when it equates Francoism, which it does not condemn, with the Second Republic. The spokesperson for Compromís called it a “Francoist pamphlet”.
The appearance of Alvise Pérez with three MEPs has caused a stir in Vox. It thought that one of the most popular spreaders of hoaxes in its parish was a secondary actor whose work could only benefit Santiago Abascal’s party. Alvise threw himself into the mud and made up news. The ultras had a good time on the networks and then they would vote for Vox. The reality was very different. The panic attack had several consequences. The most important was to abandon Meloni in the European Parliament and join the group of the Hungarian Orbán. The first was that it had stopped being a pest for the European right. It was no longer hard enough for Vox.
With the intention of stopping the showman Abascal decided to tighten the screws on the PP and show that there is no one as macho as those from Vox. On a less relevant and more pathetic level, Vox copied Alvise Pérez’s idea of publishing a list of headlines every day on social networks, a handful of hoaxes for the most part. It is sad that a political party plagiarizes the tactics used by those who do not receive wide coverage in the media, as is the case with Vox.
Everything has gone wrong for Vox since the purge took place. The party was left in the hands of its most fundamentalist sector. In the parliamentary group, the deputies with a more independent, but not moderate, mentality were eliminated before the July elections. The Taliban imposed control and unconditional adherence to the leadership. Together with Abascal in the seats, there is now a spokesperson under 30 years old and a 35-year-old deputy, José María Figaredo, who when he gets up to speak provokes laughter from the socialist deputies. Before before he starts talking. It is clear that Ivan Espinosa de los Monteros and Macarena Olona had more weight than their successors.
Before making the final decision, Abascal accused Alberto Núñez Feijóo of being responsible for the split between the two parties. “Mr. Feijóo tried from the beginning to break the regional pacts with Vox and has not stopped until making them impossible,” he said on Wednesday morning in Congress without offering any evidence of this. He did not realize that he was presenting the leader of the PP as a cunning guy who had deceived Vox, while he himself was left looking like a fool who was easy to confuse.
Late on Thursday, Abascal announced the decision that everyone had taken for granted. The board meeting must not have been a formality. It started at six thirty in the evening and Abascal was scheduled to make a statement without questions at eight. In the end, he turned up an hour and a half late. All the leaders had to appear behind him, a common recourse when you want to claim that everyone is with the leader, whether it is true or not.
The wait was not worth it. Abascal limited himself to accusing Feijóo of having “dedicated himself to torpedoing the agreements” with Vox and of ordering his presidents to accept the distribution of less than 400 immigrant minors. That was all it was. He immediately announced that the pacts with the PP are broken and that his deputies will go into opposition. With the budgets approved in those communities, the PP will take it easy.
It will be Vox who will have to decide as soon as possible what its future will be in these parliaments, pressured from both sides, from the PP which will have the support of the right-wing press, and to a lesser extent from Alvise Pérez’s digital band.
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