The plenary sessions of the Madrid City Council have something of déjà vu. The mayor and spokesperson of Vox Javier Ortega Smith has been rebuked this Thursday by the PP, the PSOE and Más Madrid, who have also asked him to leave his act as a councillor in the plenary session and as a deputy of the Congress for throwing a bottle at the councillor of Más Madrid Eduardo Fernández Rubiño in the plenary session of December 22. Ortega-Smith has left, along with the councillors of his party, the hemicycle where the extraordinary plenary session convened by the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, was being held. Minutes later, he told the press: "I don't give a damn." The Vox councillor recalled that this is not the first time this has happened.
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Ortega Smith or a dirtier-than-bottle attack
In 2019, the PSOE, Ciudadanos and Más Madrid already condemned him for his denialist speech of sexist violence in the institutional act of the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. That November 2019, after the plenary session, the councilman said those same words: "Let's say I don't give a damn." Three years later, Ortega Smith is still a councilman.
In Thursday's plenary session, as he did in 2019, he assured the hemicycle that Vox is the victim. He has denied that the bottle episode and the "now, cry" that he directed at Fernández Rubiño were an aggression. "The only aggression is the one that you," said the Vox councillor addressing the mayor of Más Madrid, "made to the victims of the infamous pact in Pamplona." Then, he concluded: "The only good thing that Mr. Rubiño did is that he said that there had been no physical aggression, leaving his spokesman with his breasts in the air [referring to Rita Maestre in a play on words about the court case in which she was acquitted for breaking into the chapel of the Complutense without the top of her clothes in 2011]."
The also ultra deputy has argued the exit of Vox from the session with the fact that they had not granted him the reply. "We will leave this plenary session because I am not in the least interested in listening to you because you do not want to listen to me," he said before leaving with the other four councillors of his party.
During the plenary session, the spokesperson for Más Madrid, Rita Maestre, assured that Ortega Smith's aggression is not an anomaly, "but Vox's method" and reminded him of other attacks by followers of the far right against members of the LGTBI community. Fernández Rubiño, in a short speech, described Vox as "a tiny minority".
"The violent use force, because what they lack are ideas," said the deputy spokesperson for Más Madrid. The spokesperson for the PSOE, Reyes Maroto, has accused the far-right of being "a cancer" in the quality of democracy. During the reply, he snapped at the PP: "We are very proud that the government has a president called Pedro Sánchez. What was the alternative, that this councillor we are disapproving today was a minister of the Government of Spain?"
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Video | From Confronting the Police to Ignoring a Victim of Gender-Based Violence: Other Controversies of Ortega Smith
In any case, Ortega Smith has decreed this Thursday the total rupture of Vox with the PP in Madrid. However, he has assured that other essential agreements with the Popular Party, which they support in regional and municipal governments, will be maintained. He has lashed out at the left-wing parties, which he has referred to as the "PSOE coup plotter" and "Hamas Madrid", and has accused them of putting up "smokescreens" to distract the people of Madrid from the pacts with Bildu in Pamplona. "I am sorry that the PP joins this theater, this farce of condemnation, and that it does so hand in hand with those who are hand in hand (sic) with the bilduetarras, the communists and the coup plotters," he said before leaving the Palacio de Cibeles.
Almeida, who spoke in the last turn of the plenary, called the ultra representative a "coward" for having left the session. "So big and so cowardly," said the mayor, who also claimed to have been a direct witness and to have noticed "from the first moment the seriousness" of the blow that Ortega Smith gave to the bottle and how it was shot at the councilor of Más Madrid.
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, listens to the intervention of Vox spokesperson, Javier Ortega Smith, during the extraordinary session held this Thursday. Claudio Álvarez
The vote was taken in just a few seconds. Although the PP has asked for a vote by points of the plenary, the left has refused and, in the end, has opted for a joint vote of all of them: the reprobation, the abandonment of the act of councillor and that of the act of deputy. The Popular Party had confirmed in recent days that they would vote in favour of the first two points, but not the last. The deputy mayor of Madrid, Inma Sanz, had said that the deputy's act was something that should be discussed in another area. Both Maestre and Maroto expressed their satisfaction at the end of the plenary session, which lasted just over an hour.
Outside the Palacio de Cibeles, on Calle de Montalbán, around 50 Vox supporters cheered the councillor, waved flags of Spain and the ultra party and launched proclamations against the mayor of Madrid. "Almeida resign, neither forgetting nor forgiving", "Almeida, brave, brave son of a bitch", "PSOE, PP the same shit is", "Javier, brave. Spain defends itself" were some of the chants that were heard in the surroundings of the City Hall headquarters.
Vox supporters, this Thursday, during the plenary session of disapproval of Javier Ortega Smith.Claudio Álvarez
For the rest, the plenary sessions of the City Council also have a bit of smoke. On Thursday, political groups accused each other of throwing smokescreens to distract citizens from various issues. The Deputy Mayor of Madrid, after making a brief rebuke of Ortega Smith, has directed most of her speech to the left. "It is not going to distract us from what is important and from the attack on the rule of law," he said, referring to the agreement between the PSOE and EH Bildu in Pamplona that has made Joseba Asiron mayor.
Almeida has thrown the darts at the same spot. "Neither Mr. Ortega wants to leave the act of councillor nor does the left want it", said the mayor and addressed the PSOE: "The existence of Vox is phenomenal for you to cover your pacts of shame".
Ortega Smith has also spoken of smoke in the plenary. He has assured that his disapproval is a smokescreen with which the left "tries to cover up the infamy of what happened in Pamplona". But he has not forgotten the Popular Party and has also criticised Alberto Núñez Feijóo for the pacts "with Sánchez's coup plotter" for the unblocking of the General Council of the Judiciary.
And, as happens in all plenary sessions, the conversation has ended up being more national than local. Almeida has not missed an opportunity: "You know that the future of a better Spain is the PP. Vox and you are converging towards a common enemy".
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