The Vox media galaxy

The signing of Toni Cantó by television 7NN, an almost unknown digital channel, surprised everyone on the 8th, including his boss, the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who a year earlier had put him in charge of the Office of the Spanish, a

for which he charged 75,000 euros per year.

However, the exact and former Citizens deputy had already given some clue about his inclinations when on September 15 of last year he greeted with a "Welcome!"

the birth of this new speaker of the extreme right.

7NN's ideology is no secret.

Its owners are the brothers José Ángel and Jaime Alonso García, former senior officials of the Francisco Franco Foundation, and its co-directors Fernando Paz, Gonzalo Altozano and Marcial Cuquerella.

The first had to resign as a Vox candidate for Congress after a conference was broadcast at the Falange headquarters minimizing the Holocaust, the second is Abascal's hagiographer and the last has been pointed out by witnesses as a member of the fundamentalist sect of Mexican origin El Yunque .

Also participating in the project are Jaime Villamor, former spokesperson for Hazte Oír, the ultra-Catholic

promoted by El Yunque;

Luis Losada, director of the same sect;

and Jaime Alonso Gil, advisor to the Vox group in Congress.

The channel was born in October 2021 with a capital of 2.5 million.

More information

Abascal urges Catholics to be intolerant and not have so many "swallows" with their principles

One of the hallmarks of Vox is its hostility towards the press.

Journalists from numerous media outlets (including EL PAÍS and Cadena SER) are denied access to party premises and public events;

and its president, Santiago Abascal, in imitation of Trump, treats with contempt what he calls the “lacaya press.”

Vox did not need it to become the third political force in Spain.

“We don't care if we don't appear in the media.

What if we are already on social networks? ”, Abascal responded with disdain.

His accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram exceed 500,000, 700,000 and 800,000 followers respectively.

Santiago Abascal, offers statements to the media this Tuesday.

Alejandro Martinez Velez (Europa Press)

However, Vox's clashes with the big technology companies, which have repeatedly suspended their accounts for inciting hatred, and the need to reach a broader audience, have led it to bet on the construction of a media apparatus that serves as a box of resonance to his speech.

Since its origins, Vox has had the patronage of a related channel, El Toro TV, which was born from the shipwreck of the Intereconomy Group and surprisingly remains under the control of its former owner, Julio Ariza, despite the fact that it had to be liquidated through bankruptcy.

The sets of Intereconomía-El Toro have served for Vox politicians to learn television techniques (as those of Podemos did in

or

and his employer has never hidden that he supports the ultra party, on whose electoral list for Barcelona he appeared as a candidate in 2019. Ex-employees of Ariza are many Vox leaders, from the deputy Juanjo Aizcorbe to the press officer, Juan E. Pflüger, or Kiko Méndez-Monasterio, whom Abascal calls his “guru”.

So why create more like-minded media?

In an interview with

, the publication of Hazte Oír, Cuquerella, co-director of 7NN, argued that his project has "more technological and economic possibilities" than Ariza's and blamed "personalism and egos" for the impossibility of coming together in an initiative common that, he warned, could not be born weighed down by the "liabilities" (debts) of his former boss (Cuquerella was director of Intereconomy TV).

The list of media in Vox's orbit does not end with 7NN and El Toro TV.

If the latter was reborn from the ashes of Intereconomy, Decision Radio has risen from those of Radio Ya, chaired by Rafael López-Diéguez, son-in-law of the historic ultra leader Blas Piñar and former leader of the far-right Spanish Alternative party.

The president of the media conglomerate formed around Decision Radio is now businessman Ángel de la Rúa Ruiz, but the station's strong man is still Javier García Isac, López-Diéguez's right-hand man at Radio Ya, and his principles are the same : the defense “of the unity of Spain and of Christian values”.

To them must be added, among other media, State of Alarm (EDA TV), the online platform of Javier Negre, a former journalist from El Mundo convicted of publishing an alleged interview with a victim of gender violence.

Marcos de Quinto, the former Citizens deputy and former director of Coca-Cola who starred in numerous controversies during his fleeting stint in Congress, has joined his Board of Directors.

In the second line are those conservative media that, without being at their service, flirt with some of Vox's plot flags;

as Libertad Digital-esRadio, by Federico Jiménez Losantos;

or

subscribers

would unsubscribe because they did not like a headline in the monarchist newspaper.

Repeatedly denounced by press associations for violating freedom of information, Vox has built a media bubble in which there is no room for criticism or uncomfortable questions.

To ensure its objective, it has assumed the right to decide which journalists can access its press conferences.

Useless endeavor.

The leaders of Vox have not been able to escape in recent weeks from the informative bombardment about the crisis opened by their former candidate for the Andalusian Board, Macarena Olona.

The silence of his propaganda apparatus has only made his determination to silence the case more evident.

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