Vox President Santiago Abascal jumps off the stage this Sunday after a rally in Murcia’s bullring Marcial Guillén (EFE)
Santiago Abascal has launched Vox’s pre-campaign for the May 28 regional and local elections, laying charges against his old party, the PP, which he said is “the PSOE ten years too late”. In the Murcia bullring, where he gathered more than 10,000 people, he assured that “the PP’s problem is that it no longer has any credit, it only has debts to the Spaniards that it has accumulated in recent years has. “
The Vox chief has accused the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of not having supported the demonstrations his party has sponsored, nor his appeals to the Constitutional Court, nor his criminal charges against Sánchez, or the motion of no confidence he has threatened for some Time, two months, and of which he has offered no news. “In the face of one of the worst governments in the history of Spain, there is nothing” from the PP, he stressed. “You can tell us we made a mistake, but not that we stayed with our arms crossed,” he lamented. “They never are. Except in the Goya. They are there even if they dedicate an award to the pro-ETarra Fermín Muguruza,” he added, referring to the presence of the President of the PP at the Spanish Film Awards Gala, where the Basque director was one of the nominees, but didn’t get one Price.
Abascal is usually very wary of Feijóo because, as he recalled this Sunday, he is leading a faction that Vox will have to come to terms with ‘eventually’. However, their aim is to maintain the loyalty of an electorate fed mainly by ex-PP voters who turned their backs on the Vox candidates in the last local and regional elections, just over three months after going to the polls have.
The PP, he assured today, is “a centre-left party” that only aspires to “inherit” the power of the PSOE and has adopted the left’s proposals. As evidence, he cites the fact that Feijóo complied with the constitutional ruling on the abortion law, which rejected his own party’s 2010 appeal. “Now only Vox remains to defend the most vulnerable,” he said, provoking applause from most anti-abortion groups. His attacks are aimed not only at the PP president, but also at his campaign spokesman Borja Semper and Congressman Cuca Gamarra, dubbed the “cockroach” by the public.
Abascal has remained silent in the face of the insult, which was not out of place in an environment previously heated up by a video insulting the prime minister. The Vox boss himself has denied the news that he has rushed his candidate for Murcia’s presidency, José Ángel Antelo, for calling former regional MPs from his party “rats”. “It fell short,” he added, laughing.
Vox had set out to make the act a success, chartering buses from different parts of Spain and mobilizing their officers. In addition to being the only autonomous community where it won the general elections of November 2019, Murcia is a fertile territory that in recent weeks has revived the so-called water war that poses it against Castilla-La Mancha due to the decline river of the Tagus Segura transfers. “The water has to reach every corner of Spain. Whatever it is,” Abascal said to applause. But it wasn’t complete yet. Although the start of the performance was delayed by half an hour, the organization claimed that people were still queuing, the backstage stands were left empty and so was the barrage, the square’s covered upper stand.
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The 13 Vox candidates for the presidency of autonomous communities and cities have climbed onto the stage: ten men and three women. Many of them are council members (such as those of Castile-La Mancha, Extremadura, Aragon, Asturias or Murcia) and only one (Balearic Islands) already sits in an autonomous assembly. The most notable absence was that of Navarre, where Vox has not yet nominated a candidate and has not even clarified if he intends to run, as he has to compete with the PP and the UPN for the votes of the Spanish right.
In the same vein of opening a loophole with the PP, the leader of Vox in Madrid, Rocío Monasterio, has brought charges against President Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who accuses her of bribing the “seafood unions” with 100 million (as he calls class) to subsidize unions) while having no money to pay doctors; and to keep in force “libericidal laws that corrupt our children,” a nod to the Community of Madrid’s LGTB law, which prohibits discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation.
All in all, the media have been the target of the Vox leadership’s biggest diatribes, accusing them of wanting to “destroy” their party. Abascal has particularly complained about criticism of those newspapers and broadcasters he sees as “PP-run and funded” as part of the internal struggle for the right-wing electorate. “We will arrive [al Gobierno] without them and we will face them if necessary,” he said.
Vox’s public attacks on the press have been a constant since its inception, which has led to tense situations between its supporters and journalists. Indeed this Sunday Vox denied accreditation to numerous media outlets including EL PAÍS.