He receives a public salary of 87,276 euros. It occupies a seat in the autonomous parliament of Catalonia, that is, a position of citizen representation. On Sunday afternoon, Ignacio Garriga, secretary general of Vox, was giving a campaign rally in Badalona when he hit the microphone of the lectern from which he was speaking and, in a rage, addressed – followed by several bodyguards – a group of people – separated from the supporters by a police cordon – who were protesting with senyeras and LGTBI flags. Vox applauded the gesture of its spokesman in Catalonia, but edited the video, hiding the end, when Garriga faces those protesting and, in the hubbub, causes a woman to fall to the ground. The official account of the party retweets Hermann Tertsch, representative of Vox in the European Parliament who, in turn, spreads a message on his networks that reads: "The Garriga thing facing the separatist rats was going to end quickly. The two acts in which the warm rats go home no longer appear." The most repeated comment about the episode on the official account of the secretary general of Vox on Instagram is: "With two cojones."
The campaign against VOX is brutal for fear that in Spain things will really change. The media falsify with bloody obscenity facts, Garriga's words and everything VOX does and says.
The verbal and physical violence against VOX and the miserable silence of others makes... https://t.co/gtFzudhyX4
— Hermann Tertsch (@hermanntertsch) July 16, 2023
The electoral campaign is mired in the final stretch with pushing, lies, insults and self-interested hyperbole. To warm the spirits of the electorate and mobilize it before the appointment with the polls on Sunday, some candidates and political formations have resorted to the old shortcut: tension. A group of individuals intimidates and hinders the work of journalists such as Adrián Aranau, sent by TVE to cover the Sanfermines, surrounded by a pack that shouts "Let you vote Txapote". In the last seven days alone, more than 106,000 tweets have been published with the phrase, included in a Vox campaign video on Monday, on the banner deployed by a plane in Benidorm, and in the replies to Consuelo Ordóñez, president of the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) and sister of Gregorio Ordóñez, councilor of the PP murdered by ETA in 1995. She remembers every day, on her Twitter account, the biographies of those killed and injured by the gang. Since he publicly asked that PP and Vox stop using that "disgusting slogan" because the "trivialization of terrorism" hurt them, he finds messages like these: "What human misery this woman will take to sell the memory of her brother and almost a thousand murdered"; "It seems that it has fallen into Stockholm syndrome"; "Of course, he charges a penny from an association and defending Sánchez will go on the lists or they will give him a position ...". Previously, Popular Democratic Party Senator Rafael Hernando had pointed it out on his social networks. During the face-to-face, Sánchez asked the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to condemn that slogan four times. He didn't.
01:54
Sánchez: "That Txapote votes for you is what leaders of the PP and Vox say with a smile"
Let TXAPOTE vote for you. pic.twitter.com/MrQMleDRX2
— Bea Fanjul (@bea_fanjul) January 14, 2023
Bea Fanjul: "No party should use the 'Let Txapote vote for you', we must respect the victims" 👇 https://t.co/1OQDS0OSo6
— El Correo (@elcorreo_com) July 17, 2023
From the lighthouse of La Moncloa — "We are close, but we are not yet inside" — the PP candidate accused Sánchez on Monday of "fomenting an artificial polarization" and promised to restore the spirit of the Transition by eliminating "the trenches." "I will not tolerate attacks on national unity or the Spain of the autonomies," he said, ignoring that his party has delivered to Vox, a far-right formation that denies the autonomous state, councils in three regional governments and presidencies of four regional parliaments. In that same campaign act, the PP leader promised to "always" tell the truth, "both sweet and bitter." Just before, he had to "clarify" in a tweet the "inaccurate" information he had given in an interview on TVE:
Feijoo: Our party never stopped revaluing pensions according to the CPI. The only party to freeze pensions was the PSOE.
Silvia Intxaurrondo: That is not correct, Mr Feijóo.
F.: That is absolutely correct.
S. I.: They did not do so in 2012, 2013 or 2017.
F.: I don't know where he gets that. We have always revalued pensions according to the CPI. Review the data yourself.
S. I.: My details are correct, Mr Feijóo.
F.: As there is a newspaper library, you will check what I tell you. If I am wrong, I apologise and if you are wrong I hope you will say so on this programme.
On Twitter, statements by the then Vice President of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, began to spread, explaining that they had not revalued pensions according to the rise in the CPI. Feijóo did not apologize, he limited himself to sending a cryptic tweet. Within minutes of the interview on TVE, there were already multiple messages against the journalist on Twitter and even defamatory articles in conservative media. Sin: defending a correct fact against a statement that was not. The deputy secretary of Institutional Action of the PP, Esteban González Pons, wrote on his social networks: "I think RTVE is going to lose the elections. And I hope that the next day the leaders of that party will resign, as is done in all parties when they lose the elections to which they are presented. Better not to go. I don't see her or go."
I think @rtve is going to lose the election. And I hope that the next day the leaders of that party will resign, as is done in all parties when they lose the elections to which they are presented.
Better not to go. I neither see nor go to her.
— González Pons (@gonzalezpons) July 17, 2023
Meanwhile, at a rally in San Sebastian, former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero accused the PP of "using the pain" of the families of those killed by ETA and said he decided he was going to throw himself into this campaign the day he heard the leader of the popular affirm, in the Senate, that Sánchez had been more generous with the executioners than with the victims. "Feijóo looks as much as a centrist as I look like a priest. They spent years looking for the center and, when they did not find it, they turned around and to the right to the bottom. There is no center-right anymore, only center-left. And Vox is a hare for us to run after it. Feijóo is the most right-wing since there has been democracy," he added. At that rally there was also room for hyperbole. Eneko Andueza, secretary general of the Basque Socialists, said: "No one can stay at home on the 23rd because the 24th may be too late. You can wake up in July 1939."
Zapatero referred to the statements of members of the PP sowing doubts about "confidence in democracy", that is, about the effectiveness of postal voting. Feijóo asked the postmen to act correctly "regardless of who their bosses are" and Francisco Bernabé, candidate of the popular Senate for Murcia asked on his Twitter account: "Does it smell like a pot?"
In that verbal escalation, a debate on Equality organized by the EFE agency with the spokespeople of the PSOE, the PP, Vox and Sumar concluded with the representative of the extreme right, María Ruiz Solás, calling transsexuals "chronically ill". A few days ago, at a PP rally with Feijóo in Castilla y León, a guest of the party declared from the stage: "Tomorrow, your daughter can come and tell her: 'Mom, I have discovered that I am trans'. They will be told to choose between a trans sonor a dead daughter. Don't fall for it: suicide is 19 times more likely if you encourage your daughter's transition."
It is a shame that a Member dares to call the spokesperson of another political organisation a 'chronically ill'.
But it happens. He has been @vox_es and he has called me. The @ppopular, complicates with his silence. In @sumar we know that Spain deserves more. pic.twitter.com/2U9baITWCQ
— Elizabeth Duval (@_elizabethduval) July 17, 2023
With less than a week to go until the elections, the parties are calling for a concentration of votes. The more PP, the less Sanchez, say the popular. The more Sumar, the less PP, the less Vox and the less "timid" PSOE, they say in Yolanda Díaz's coalition. Journalists are still looking for the phantom ticker that Feijóo said had confused him by claiming that the Pegasus case had been closed because of the Prime Minister, rather than, as the judge points out, "the absolute" lack of cooperation from the Israeli authorities. Also in the left bloc there are mirages, such as the staging of unity in the only campaign event to date with the candidate of Sumar and the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, or the categorical affirmation, still to be seen, depending on what happens on 23-J, of Zapatero this Monday: "The PSOE is behind Sánchez as one man."
He receives every afternoon the bulletin Diario electoral, with the analysis of Ricardo de Querol, deputy director, and Luis Barbero, editor-in-chief editor.
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