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Vox | |
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President | Santiago Abascal |
Secretary-General | Javier Ortega Smith |
Founded | 17 December 2013 |
Split from | People's Party |
Membership (2019) | ![]() |
Ideology | |
Political position | Right-wing[19] to far-right[20] |
European affiliation | European Conservatives and Reformists Party |
European Parliament group | European Conservatives and Reformists[21] |
Colours | Green |
Congress of Deputies | 52 / 350 |
Senate | 3 / 265 |
European Parliament | 4 / 59 |
Regional parliaments | 57 / 1,268 |
Mayors in Spain | 5 / 8,122 |
Town councillors | 530 / 67,121 |
Website | |
www | |
Vox (Latin for "voice", often stylized as VOX; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈboks]) is a political party in Spain founded on 17 December 2013, by former members of the People's Party (PP). The party is described variously as right-wing,[22][23] right-wing populist,[24][25] or far-right.[15][26][27][28][29]
Vox was founded on 17 December 2013,[30] and publicly launched at a press conference in Madrid on 16 January 2014[31][32] as a split from the People's Party. This schism was interpreted as an offshoot of "neocon"[33] or "social conservative"[34] PP party members. The party platform sought to rewrite the constitution to abolish regional autonomy and parliaments.[32] 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.[35] Vidal-Quadras was proclaimed as the first chairman in March 2014.[36][n. 1]
The initial funding, totalling nearly 972,000 euros, came from individual money transfers by supporters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).[35][38]
Vox ran for the first time in the 2014 European elections but narrowly failed to win a seat in the European Parliament.[39]
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.[40] After the Catalan declaration of independence, the party sued the Parliament of Catalonia and several independentist politicians[41] and increased a 20% in forty days the number of members.[28]
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.[42] On 2 December 2018 they won 12 parliamentary seats in the Andalusian regional election,[43] 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.[44]
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.[45] Later, the party entered for its first time in the European Parliament with 6.2% of the votes and 3 eurodeputies, which after Brexit became 4. 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.[46] It was the most-voted party in the Region of Murcia and the autonomous city of Ceuta.[47]
Vox has been described as a Far-right party within the subset of the radical-right family.[48] Unlike other European radical right parties, its discourse relies relatively less in populism and more on nationalism.[48] It mixes nationalism and nativism with an authoritarian vision of society.[48] Its economic agenda is neoliberal.[48]
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,[49] endorsing anti-Islam as well as criticism of multiculturalism and criticizing immigration from Muslim countries,[50][51] but at the same time promoting immigration from countries of Latin America in order to repopulate Spain.[52] Their view of European Union is that of a soft euroscepticism, arguing that Spain should make no sovereignty concessions to the EU, because they consider Spanish sovereignty to reside in the Spanish nation alone.[14][53] They propose to eliminate Spain's autonomous communities.[54] In addition, they seek the return of Gibraltar to full Spanish sovereignty.[55]
Vox is considered antifeminist,[56] and wants to repeal the gender violence law,[57] 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".[58]
The party pleads for the closure of fundamentalist mosques as well as the arrest and expulsion of extremist imams.[58] Vox has openly called for the deportation of tens of thousands of Muslims from Spain.[59] In 2019, the party's leader demanded a Reconquista or reconquest of Spain,[60] explicitly referencing a new expulsion of Muslim immigrants from the country.[61]
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] 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][62]
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".[63][64]
Vox openly endorses the State of Israel. The party has also appealed to conspiracy theories invoking the figure of Jewish philanthropist George Soros as mastermind behind Catalan separatism and the alleged "Islamization" of Europe.[65] Vox has also featured some former neo-Nazis in party cadres and lists;[66][67] some of them have been expelled from the party or have resigned.[68][69] In November 2018, during a party event in Murcia, the party leader Santiago Abascal defined his party as "antifascist, antinazi and anticommunist".[70]
Cortes Generales | |||||||||
Election | Congress | Senate | Leading candidate | Gov. | |||||
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Votes | % | # | Seats | +/– | Seats | +/– | |||
2015 | 58,114 | 0.2 | 15th | 0 / 350
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0 / 208
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Santiago Abascal | No seats |
2016 | 47,182 | 0.2 | 13th | 0 / 350
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![]() |
0 / 208
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No seats | |
Apr-2019 | 2,688,092 | 10.3 | 5th | 24 / 350
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![]() |
0 / 208
|
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New election | |
Nov-2019 | 3,656,979 | 15.1 | 3rd | 52 / 350
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2 / 208
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No |
European Parliament | ||||||
Election | Votes | % | # | Seats | +/– | Leading candidate |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2014 | 246,833 | 1.6 | 11th | 0 / 54
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Alejo Vidal-Quadras |
2019 | 1,393,684 | 6.2 | 5th | 3 / 54
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Jorge Buxadé |
Region | Election | Votes | % | # | Seats | Gov. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Andalusia | 2018 | 396,607 | 11.0 | 5th | 12 / 109
|
Support |
Aragon | 2019 | 40,671 | 6.1 | 6th | 3 / 67
|
No |
Asturias | 2019 | 34,210 | 6.4 | 7th | 2 / 45
|
No |
Balearic Islands | 2019 | 34,871 | 8.1 | 6th | 3 / 59
|
No |
Basque Country | 2016 | 771 | 0.1 | 12th | 0 / 75
|
No seats |
Canary Islands | 2019 | 22,021 | 2.5 | 7th | 0 / 70
|
No seats |
Cantabria | 2019 | 16,496 | 5.1 | 5th | 2 / 35
|
No |
Castile and León | 2019 | 75,731 | 5.5 | 4th | 1 / 81
|
No |
Castilla–La Mancha | 2019 | 75,813 | 7.0 | 4th | 0 / 33
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No seats |
Extremadura | 2019 | 28,992 | 4.7 | 5th | 0 / 65
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No seats |
La Rioja | 2019 | 6,314 | 3.9 | 6th | 0 / 33
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No seats |
Madrid | 2019 | 287,667 | 8.9 | 5th | 12 / 132
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Support |
Murcia | 2019 | 61,998 | 9.5 | 4th | 4 / 45
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Support |
Navarre | 2019 | 4,546 | 1.3 | 7th | 0 / 50
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No seats |
Valencian Community | 2019 | 281,608 | 10.6 | 5th | 10 / 99
|
No |
In December 2019 the Government of Gibraltar took steps to take Vox to court over remarks they made which it alleged intended to cause incitement of hatred towards Gibraltarians.[71]
Su ideario parece hallarse aún en construcción y tiene como eje vertebrador un ultranacionalismo bélico asociado a la “Reconquista” o a una “Covadonga 2.0”, El partido lo identifica con una visión biológica y palingenética de la patria, la “España viva”, pero también con una cultura de inspiración católica.
Diría eso de que “con esto a Vox se le ha caído la careta”, pero es que no creo que Vox se haya puesto nunca caretas que oculten su vertiente neoliberal y de servidumbre a las élites financieras.
su nacionalismo se conjuga con [...] un discurso económico liberal
Vox could be described as the first attempt to form a modern right-wing populist party in Spain, with no echoes of the Francoist period. Rather than bank on Francoist nostalgia, the party aimed to attract right-wing voters dissatisfied with Partido Popular policies.
Vistalegre dibuja a Vox como la expresión de que una parte de la derecha “neocon” española se ha desgajado de la nave nodriza del Partido Popular
Bertrand Ndongo (Vox): "España no debería permitir la invasión de los musulmanes"
Santiago Abascal alertó a los presentes acerca de “ese 4% de musulmanes que hay en España y que, para algunos, puede resultar una minoría simpática”. Su advertencia fue muy concreta: “No queremos que se conviertan en un problema”.
Porque estamos convencidos de que nación y soberanía son conceptos íntimamente relacionados. Si somos soberanos es porque somos una Nación y no tenemos derecho a entregar lo que hemos recibido de nuestros mayores. España debe estar en Europa pero sin complejos, reivindicando el papel histórico, industrial y agrícola que merecemos. No debemos ser vasallos de Merkel ni de Tsipras. Ni camareros de Merkel ni paganos de las propinas de Tsipras. Las Cortes de Cádiz proclamaron que la Nación española era libre e independiente y que no podía ser patrimonio de ninguna familia o persona. Proclamaron asimismo que la soberanía reside esencialmente en la Nación, que es la única que tiene derecho a establecer sus leyes fundamentales. Esta declaración de soberanía ha sido una constante en toda nuestra historia constitucional.
A tenor de lo que muestra el programa, cultura es para Vox lengua y tradición, siguiendo el viejo lema de los partidos nacionalistas.
Según informa Vox Alcalá de Henares en un comunicado, Bonito ya ha presentado ante la Junta Electoral de Zona un «escrito de renuncia a formar parte de dicha candidatura y a su acta de concejal electo» en el caso de que la obtuviera.
Tanto a Ortega Smith como a Rocío Monasterio les ha faltado tiempo para desvincularse de Ruiz Puerta. Sostienen que nunca ha militado ni pertenecido a Vox, lo que desdice lo que él mismo ha publicado en redes sociales y también lo que manifestó en “Alt News”. En el espacio radial dirigido y conducido por Santiago Fontenla sostuvo que él tenía “acceso directo” a Abascal y daba por consumada su incorporación a ese proyecto político.
Santiago Abascal [...]definió a su formación como «antifascista, antinazi»
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