The deputy who scolds women

With a background of four decades of political life and more than two as a PP deputy, Carlos Aragonés is supposed to have been cured of terror. And yet, the one who was José María Aznar's chief of staff and advisor to Mariano Rajoy, now president of the National Security Commission of Congress, could not suppress his astonishment last Thursday: “My God, it's not possible! ... It is very regrettable ”. In the middle of a debate that was taking place in a rather placid way, a deputy from Vox had just blurted out to the president of the commission: "You are quite rude." A moment before, Aragonés had already encountered the defiant response of the parliamentarian after asking him a question on a mere formal question. "If you address me in this authoritarian tone, I don't think I'm answering you," the Vox representative challenged Aragonés.

That deputy is called José María Sánchez García, a 58-year-old from Madrid, a jurist with proven erudition, a university professor, a judge on leave of absence, an ex-lawyer from the Court of Justice of the European Union and a former employee in a large law firm in the capital. That deputy Sánchez who left the hardened Aragonese stunned was the same one who two days earlier had caused the biggest tangana in Congress in recent years, when he was expelled for calling a PSOE parliamentarian a "witch" and refused to comply with the order. The same professor Sánchez who years ago lectured at Catholic congresses to lament the loss of the "essential notes of marriage, irrevocability, unity, heterosexuality" and predicted the imminent legalization of polygamy in Spain.

Before last Thursday's clash with Aragonés and the episode two days before that the image of Sánchez, an insurgent in the middle of the hemicycle, passed through all televisions, the deputy had already starred in several clashes in his less than two years in Congress. And the most popular, in front of women. Not only the deputies of the left, also those of the PP have in private very harsh words about the attitude of the Vox parliamentarian with his female opponents.

One of his usual targets is precisely the popular spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, who is often referred to in a sarcastic tone as "doña Cuca." Last November, he repeatedly mocked Gamarra's legal knowledge, amid strong protests from popular seats, countered with mocking shouts from the Vox bench to cheer on Sánchez. "Be merciful! Have mercy!

Days later, Sánchez attacked for no apparent reason against the popular parliamentarian for Ourense Ana Belén Vázquez, who was not even in the hemicycle at that time, and whom he called "that gaudy Galician deputy." "Now, I know he's a macho," Sánchez replied to the indignation that erupted in the PP bench, "now doña Cuca will come to tell me." Vázquez did not receive an apology from Vox. What's more, they crushed it on ultras social networks. The deputy had already had a sounded premiere in the Chamber at the beginning of 2020 after describing a speech by the then First Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, as his own "from Mrs. Francis's office."

If the speeches of the Vox parliamentarians are carefully followed, it is possible to notice a certain generational leap between them. Young people - especially women - sprinkle their words with the great mantras of the new world extreme right and their attacks on "multiculturalism" and "globalist elites." Older people stick more closely to the old canons of extreme conservatism. Among the latter are people with successful professional careers, such as high-ranking military personnel or lawyers. This group includes two professors from the Seville Law School: Francisco José Contreras, closely connected to the ultra-Catholic organization Hazte Oír, and José María Sánchez, specialist in Ecclesiastical Law.

De Sánchez have always highlighted, according to former university colleagues, his "intelligence and preparation." Also his very traditional ideas. "He is like a character from another era," sums up a professor from his faculty. In Congress he uses the stale formula —which no one uses there anymore, except some from Vox— of "with the permission" to start his speeches, always adorned with quotes on legal literature. Through the courtyard of the parliamentary seat he often walks with his cigar at the ready and a picture that almost reminds more of the deputies of the Restoration than of today's Parliament, where you can see dreadlocks, tattoos and abundant sports shoes.

Sánchez sits in the last row of the hemicycle and, crouching there, was where he shouted "witch" last Tuesday, when the socialist Laura Berja defended the law to impose criminal sanctions on those who harass women in front of abortion clinics. Then, under instructions from the spokesman for his group, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, he refused to comply with the expulsion order and ended up correcting with recklessness: "Retirement that I have called a witch."

The incident has sowed dismay in Congress.

Deputies from various groups, also from the PP, emphasize that the most serious thing was not Sánchez's insubordination, but that the entire Vox group covered him.

His groupmates encouraged his disobedience and ordered him to sit in the row occupied by their main spokesmen.

The president of the Chamber, Meritxell Batet, then called Espinosa de los Monteros to his office to demand that he respect the rules.

The feeling is growing among the groups that Parliament is turning into a dangerous tinderbox.

It is privately regretted by a PP deputy who is very critical of Vox's attitudes: "As we do not stop this, any day we are going to end up with fists."