Vox (political party)

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Vox
President	Santiago Abascal
Secretary-General	Javier Ortega Smith
Founded	17 December 2013
Split from	People's Party
Membership (2019)	53,985[1]
Ideology	Ultranationalism[2][3][4][5] National conservatism[6] Social conservatism[7][8][9] Right-wing populism[10] Economic liberalism[5][11][12][13] Soft Euroscepticism[8][14] Anti-Islam[15][16] Centralism[17][18]
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.voxespana.es
Politics of Spain Political parties Elections

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]}

History

Javier Ortega Smith giving a speech in 2018 in Vistalegre.

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]

Ideology

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]

Electoral performance

Cortes Generales

Cortes Generales
Election	Congress					Senate		Leading candidate	Gov.
	Votes	%	#	Seats	+/–	Seats	+/–
2015	58,114	0.2	15th	0 / 350	0	0 / 208	0	Santiago Abascal	No seats
2016	47,182	0.2	13th	0 / 350	0	0 / 208	0		No seats
Apr-2019	2,688,092	10.3	5th	24 / 350	24	0 / 208	0		New election
Nov-2019	3,656,979	15.1	3rd	52 / 350	28	2 / 208	2		No

European Parliament

European Parliament
Election	Votes	%	#	Seats	+/–	Leading candidate
2014	246,833	1.6	11th	0 / 54	0	Alejo Vidal-Quadras
2019	1,393,684	6.2	5th	3 / 54	3	Jorge Buxadé

Regional parliaments

Criticism

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]

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vox.

• Official site