Each Western power (at least, the ones in Europe) has a far-right political party which will fight tooth and nail, by fair means and foul, to gain ascendency in the national politics.
Here in Spain, it’s Vox (there are a few others, but currently of no interest). The party today has 33 deputies in the Spanish parliament making it the third largest group. These include their po-faced spokesperson Pepa Millán and the nephew of the disgraced conservative politician Rodrigo Rato, the oddly inept José María Figaredo (known as Frigodedo by his detractors).
Vox began in 2013, when its leader Santiago Abascal dropped his membership in the Partido Popular to start a fresh far-right party. Santi (as he is called by his supporters) is a handsome-looking fellow, and instead of sporting a wild hair-style, like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Geert Wilders, he is well-groomed, has a short beard, and – when the cameras are willing – he might jump on a horse in a manly sort of way. In short, he’s more of a Putin than a clown.
All of the original founders of Vox have since squabbled with Abascal and have left politics – as Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, Macarena Olona, Rocio Monasterio, Víctor Sánchez del Real, Juan Luis Steegman… and now (hanging by his fingertips), Javier Ortega Smith – the Vox spokesperson in the Madrid City Hall, best remembered for swimming into Gibraltar in 2016 and raising – briefly – a Spanish flag on the rock there.
Ignacio Garriga is the party Secretary General, a highly religious man born in Catalonia with a Spanish/Belgian father and an Equatoguinean mother. For obvious reasons, he will have reached his zenith with his current position and is no threat to his boss.
The party is present in the European Parliament – led by a man who came from the moribund Falange Española de las JONS and a lookalike for the baddie in the first Indiana Jones film called Jorge Buxadé. Vox is aligned with the Patriots for Europe (Fidesz, Rassemblement National, Vlaams Belang and others: parties in thrall to Donald Trump).
Vox is also found in most of the regional governments and many town halls – usually either in an uneasy alliance with the Partido Popular or sniffily standing aside. Says Abascal regarding any deal to be made post-elections in the two regions of Extremadura or Aragón: ‘The PP wants to treat us like savages’, he says. If they fail to come to an arrangement – and Vox increased its number of councillors in both elections – then the regions will need to call for fresh elections. The next regional ballot, with a similar PP/Vox forecast, is Castilla-León later this month.
The party program is simple enough: old school nationalism, tradition, Catholic, anti-immigrant, unimpressed by women’s issues and global warming, and in favour of lower taxes. The party does well with young men (who are apparently concerned that women have too many rights and protections). It’s also popular in the countryside, particularly in the provinces of Murcia, Almería and Cádiz (where there are lots of foreign immigrants working the fields: people – needless to say – who don’t have the Vote). Those underprivileged folk who back the ‘ultras’ are sometimes known as ‘los fachapobres’ – that’s to say, the poor fascists.
Make España Great Again, although Santi rarely wears a vulgar cap.
Vox is in some ways merely an extension of the Partido Popular (which has recently been moving to the right in an attempt to claw back support), and notable extremists within the PP include Isabel Díaz Ayuso (president of the Madrid region) and the PP deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo.
Right now, there’s an issue in Murcia, where José Ángel Antelo the alarmingly tall Vox leader there has fallen into disapproval from Abascal, but (like Ortega Smith above) won’t leave his post. As one headline says with satisfaction: ‘The far right is slowly devouring itself while selling order and discipline to its supporters’. Another is of more concern: ‘Centralized command and a personality cult: Abascal sidelines critics and completes his vision for the new Vox’.
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