Faced with the trickle of casualties in its ranks and unfavorable polls, the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has undertaken a flight forward.
Abascal took advantage this Saturday of his proclamation as president of the ultra formation until 2028 to launch an order: he announced that he will ask the PP and the Mixed Group to give him the signature of two deputies so that, added to his 33 seats, he completes the 10 % of Congress needed to force a referendum on constitutional reform.
Vox, which initially abstained and ultimately voted against the modification of article 49 of the fundamental law to change the word “disabled” to people with disabilities, now alleges that the reform discriminates against men because it adds that “particular attention will be paid to the specific needs of women and girls with disabilities.
The initiative has no signs of succeeding, since all the other parliamentary groups support the change, but Vox aspires to regain prominence at a time when it is trying to establish its own profile against the PP.
For the first time, the ultra formation has distanced itself from the demonstration called this Sunday by the popular party against the coalition government and Abascal has today unearthed the adjective "cowardly right-wing", which he had not used for years, to disqualify Alberto's party Núñez Feijóo.
The Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Argentine President Javier Milei have supported Abascal with messages recorded at the event in which he was enthroned at the head of Vox for four more years.
The leader of Fratelli d' Italia has urged him to prepare for the “very important event” of the European elections on June 9, “to finally give the European Union the change of course that we have been waiting for for a long time.”
For his part, the new Argentine president, who has defined himself as a “libertarian liberal,” has called on his “dearest friend” Abascal “not to lower his arms, to continue fighting because we are few but good who fight for life, liberty and property.”
The Vox general assembly itself barely lasted half an hour.
It has not been a Bulgarian-style congress, with more votes than voters, as the former party leader Macarena Olona predicted, since there has not even been a vote.
The president of the internal electoral committee, Gema Herrero, has assured that the list headed by Abascal was the only one that has obtained the endorsement of more than 10% of the members - although she has not revealed how many endorsements it has received - and, according to the candidate for re-election, has decided to proclaim his victory without submitting it to the vote of the members, as he explained.
It is the same thing that Abascal did in the previous congress, in 2020.
The party leader later assured: “I have stood for re-election because Vox members, sympathizers and voters have asked me to do so.
“No media has asked me for it.”
In the absence of ballot boxes, the applause meter has been the thermometer to measure the support of the bases for the different Vox leaders.
As the names of the new members of the National Executive Committee (CEN) were read, they stood up to greet the public and it was seen that, after Abascal himself, the most applauded was the former secretary general Javier Ortega Smith , who was first demoted to vice president and has now remained as a simple member of the executive.
At the rally that followed the general assembly - both held in the assembly hall of a hotel in Madrid, with 2,000 seats -, Abascal described the existence of divisions or currents within the of his formation and has attributed it to the “deafening noise” caused by “fake news” about his party.
Attacks on the press have been constant in an event in which access to several media outlets has been banned;
among them, to EL PAÍS.
Abascal has boasted that his party already governs over 14 million Spaniards and has displayed muscle by parading the four vice presidents of the autonomous governments in coalition with the PP, whom he has incorporated into the new leadership.
All of them have thanked Abascal for his appointment and several, such as the Castilian Juan García-Gallardo, have shown the most xenophobic side of Vox, attributing crime to immigration, calling for defense against “the Islamization of Spain and all of Europe” or demanding an “immigration blockade.”
Although he has greeted his party's candidate for the Xunta in the February 18 elections, Álvaro Díaz-Mella, from the rostrum, Abascal has missed the opportunity to make him known by giving him the microphone in an event in which eight speakers have participated.
Paradoxically, the convening of this congress, brought forward in theory so that the party can focus on the upcoming electoral processes, will not prevent it from having to hold another one in the coming months, since the party's annual accounts have not been approved as legally required. .
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