Vox (political party)

Javier Ortega Smith giving a speech in 2018 in Vistalegre.

Vox was founded on 17 December 2013,[26] and publicly launched at a press conference in Madrid on 16 January 2014[27][28] as a split from the People's Party. This schism was interpreted as an offshoot of "neocon"[29] or "social conservative"[30] PP party members.[n. 1] The party platform sought to rewrite the constitution to abolish regional autonomy and parliaments.[28] Several of their promoters (for example: Alejo Vidal-Quadras, José Antonio Ortega Lara or Santiago Abascal) had been members of the platform "reconversion.es" that issued a manifesto in 2012 vouching for the recentralization of the State.[32] Vidal-Quadras was proclaimed as the first chairman in March 2014.[33][n. 2]

The initial funding, totalling nearly 972,000 euros, came from individual money transfers by supporters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).[32][35]

Vox ran for the first time in the 2014 European elections but narrowly failed to win a seat in the European Parliament.[36]

In September 2014 the party elected Santiago Abascal, one of the founders, as new President, and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, also a founder, as General Secretary. Eleven members of the National Executive Committee were also elected.

The party participated in the 2015 and the 2016 elections, but did not do well, scoring 0.23% and 0.20% of votes respectively.

After the Catalan referendum of 2017 and the start of a Spanish constitutional crisis, Vox opted to not participate in the Catalan regional elections of 2017.[37] After the Catalan declaration of independence, the party sued the Parliament of Catalonia and several independentist politicians[38] the number of its members increased by 20% in forty days.[39]

On 10 September 2018 Vox enlisted an independent legislator in the regional parliament of Extremadura (who had dropped out of the PP parliamentary group) as party member.[40] On 2 December 2018 they won 12 parliamentary seats in the Andalusian regional election,[41] [42] entering a regional parliament for the first time. It supported the coalition regional government by Ciudadanos and the Popular Party. With this result, Vox was also given a first seat in the Senate of Spain, which was taken by Francisco José Alcaraz.[43]

The party obtained 10.26% of votes in the April 2019 general election, electing 24 Deputies and entering the Congress of Deputies for the first time in its history.[44] Later, the party entered for its first time in the European Parliament with 6.2% of the votes and three Eurodeputies, which after Brexit became four. After this election, the party joined the European Conservatives and Reformists group and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe.[21] In the second general election of the year in November, Vox came third and increased its number of deputies from 24 to 52.[45] It was the most-voted party in the Region of Murcia and the autonomous city of Ceuta.[46]

In October 2020, the Vox's parliamentary group at the Congress of Deputies tabled a motion of no confidence against the current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, bringing Santiago Abascal as alternative candidate.[47] The motion failed to track any support among the rest of parliamentary forces, gathering 52 'yes' votes (those of Vox legislators) and 298 'no' votes (the rest of the chamber).[48]

In face of the 2020 United States presidential election Vox fully supported President Donald Trump's candidacy,[49] even tweeting from its official account that Joe Biden was the preferred candidate of "El País, Podemos, Otegi, Maduro, China, Iran and pedophiles", which according to EFE was echoing QAnon conspiracy theories.[50] Vox took part in the 2020 CPAC conference and refused to acknowledge Biden's victory.[51]

Vox has been described as a far-right party within the subset of the radical-right family.[52][22] Unlike other European radical right parties, its discourse relies relatively less on populism and more on nationalism.[53] It mixes nationalism and nativism with an authoritarian vision of society,[52] opposing what the party terms as "radical left-wing feminism" favouring "traditional" gender norms instead.[54] Its economic agenda has been described as "neoliberal".[52]

Starting with a focus in economically liberal stances and recentralization proposals, the focus of their message shifted towards stances compatible with European right-wing populism,[55] endorsing anti-Islam as well as criticism of multiculturalism. Their view of European Union is that of a Euroscepticism, arguing that Spain should make no sovereignty concessions to the EU, because they consider Spanish sovereignty to reside in the Spanish nation alone.[15][56] They propose to eliminate Spain's autonomous communities.[57] In addition, they seek the return of Gibraltar to full Spanish sovereignty.[58]

Vox is considered antifeminist,[59] and wants to repeal the gender violence law,[60] which they see as "discriminant against one of the sexes" and replace it with a "family violence law that will afford the same protection to the elderly, men, women and children who suffer from abuse".[61]

The party pleads for the closure of fundamentalist mosques as well as the arrest and expulsion of extremist imams.[61] Vox has openly called for the deportation of tens of thousands of Muslims from Spain.[62] In 2019, the party's leader demanded a Reconquista or reconquest of Spain,[63] explicitly referencing a new expulsion of Muslim immigrants from the country.[64]

According to Xavier Casals, the warlike ultranationalism in Vox, unifying part of its ideology up to this point, is identified by the party with a palingenetic and biological vision of the country, the so-called "España Viva", but also with a Catholic-inspired culture.[3] According to Casals, the ideological roots of the Vox's ultranationalism lie in the incondicionalismo ("unconditionalism"), the nationalist discourse based on the "fear of amputation of the homeland" coined in the 19th century in Colonial Cuba against Cuban separatism and also autonomist concessions (replicated in Catalonia in the 1910s).[65] Their specific brand of Spanish nationalism is linked to the unconditional support to the State Security Forces and Corps.[66] The party discourse has also revived the myth of the Antiespaña ("Anti-Spain"), an umbrella term created in the 1930s by the domestic ultranationalist forces to designate the (inner) "Enemies of Spain",[5][67] creating a simplistic España viva/Antiespaña duality that comes handy for the communication in brief messages characteristic of social media.[66] Regarding the external projection of their discourse, the party has reanimated the concept of "Hispanidad"; party leader Abascal has stated that an immigrant coming from a "brotherly Hispano-American country" is not comparable to the immigration coming from "Islamic countries".[68]

According to Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, Vox's discourse, which he described as "economically anti-statist and neoliberal" as well as "morally authoritarian", is similar to Jörg Haider's FPÖ or Jean Marie Le Pen's National Front from the 1980s, thus likening the emergence of the party to an archaic stage of current radical right parties, more worried about the need to modernize their image than Vox; the later's approach to cultural issues would be in line with old school Spanish nationalist parties, restricting the scope of "culture" to "language and tradition".[69][70]

While Vox openly endorses the State of Israel, the party has appealed to conspiracy theories invoking the figure of Jewish philanthropist George Soros as mastermind behind Catalan separatism and the alleged "Islamization" of Europe.[71] Vox has also featured some former neo-Nazis in party cadres and lists;[72][73] some of them have been expelled from the party or have resigned.[74][75] In November 2018, during a party event in Murcia, the party leader Santiago Abascal defined his party as "antifascist, antinazi and anticommunist".[76]

While the party platform only espouses proposals against Islamic fundamentalism, the statements in the public sphere by party figures espouse a wider Islamophobia, helping to underpin, according to Casals, their discourse against Maghrebi immigration, the development of a closer bond to Catholicism, as well as their anti-feminist message (undermining the importance of feminist struggle in the advance of liberties of women by means of linking the latter to a culture with "Christian foundations").[77]

• History of the far-right in Spain

Citations

Bibliography

• Carmona Pascual, Pablo (2020). "Vox y el dilema de las derechas". Familia, raza y nación en tiempos de posfascismo (PDF). Traficantes de Sueños. pp. 161–186. ISBN 978-84-121259-4-8.
• Casals, Xavier (2020). "El ultranacionalismo de Vox. Cinco claves para comprender 'la España viva'". Grand Place. Pensamiento y Cultura. Zarautz: Mario Onaindia Fundazioa. 13: 27–35. ISSN 2386-429X.
• Ferreira, Carles (2019). "Vox como representante de la derecha radical en España: un estudio sobre su ideología" [Vox as Representative of the Radical Right in Spain: A study of its Ideology]. Revista Española de Ciencia Política (in Spanish). 51 (51): 73–98. doi:10.21308/recp.51.03. ISSN 2173-9870.
• Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J. (2019). "Explaining the end of Spanish exceptionalism and electoral support for Vox". Research & Politics. SAGE. 6 (2). doi:10.1177/2053168019851680.
• Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart; Rama, José; Santana, Andrés (2020). "The Baskerville's dog suddenly started barking: voting for VOX in the 2019 Spanish general elections". Political Research Exchange. 2 (1). doi:10.1080/2474736X.2020.1781543.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vox.

• Official site