A former leader of Spain's main right-wing party in Catalonia, who also helped found the far-right Vox party, was shot and wounded on Thursday (November 9th) in the street in central Madrid, AFP learned from a police source.
Alejo Vidal-Quadras "was shot in the head around 13:30 p.m. on Calle Núñez de Balboa in Madrid," the source said. "He was transferred, conscious, to the hospital," the source said, adding that the National Police's homicide squad was in charge of the investigation.
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A "planned" action
The emergency services of the Spanish capital said in a message published on X that they were in the process of "stabilizing a 78-year-old man with gunshot wounds (...) in the area of the mandible'. For the time being, the motive for the attack is not known. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo, citing police sources, nevertheless claims that the perpetrator of the shooting was riding a black motorcycle. According to the newspaper, he was a professional who carried out a "planned" action after studying the victim's movements.
According to El País, the shooter is believed to be the passenger of the motorcycle that was being driven by another individual. The Spanish daily assures that the police do not consider this attack to be an attack for the moment. The investigations were therefore entrusted to investigators from the Madrid Police Prefecture and not to counter-terrorism specialists.
Alejo Vidal-Quadras is an important figure on the Spanish right. He chaired the right-wing People's Party (PP) in the Catalonia region in the 1990s. He was then an MEP from 1999 to 2014. He broke with the People's Party in 2014 and was one of the founders of the far-right Vox party the same year, before becoming Vox's first president. He soon left the party after its creation.