When the Vox candidate for Mayor of Madrid, Javier Ortega Smith (Madrid, 1968), had barely turned a quarter of a century, one could already see in him the facets that shape his political figure today, the most angry and aggressive leadership of Vox. The young Ortega Smith had already developed his far-right political vocation -between the ages of 16 and 23 he was a member of the Spanish Falange de las Jons-, his affinity with the Army -he did military service in the Special Operations Groups (the Green Berets) -, his love of sports -mountaineering, swimming, horse riding and, above all, karate- and his academic preparation for the legal profession.

Now he is celebrating four years of legislature in the city of Madrid, a political adventure that began with a government pact with José Luis Martínez Almeida, and seeks to differentiate himself from the mayor and give the feeling that the city needs him to watch over him. The agreement between the councilor and the leader of Vox in the City Council was forged around the purpose of repealing Madrid Central. The legal impossibility of carrying out this measure, which led Almeida to camouflage that Central Madrid under his Central District, opened a gap between the two politicians, and the entire electoral strategy of Ortega Smith has been built on it.

With an Argentine mother and a Spanish father, Ortega Smith is the third in a saga of lawyers, a profession inherited from his father and grandfather, who was senior lawyer in the Madrid City Council and established close ties with important figures of the Franco regime.. He shared his military facet with his cousin, a division general in the reserve and executive president of the Francisco Franco National Foundation.

The Vox candidate's career as a lawyer led him to take care of the legal services of the Foundation for the Defense of the Spanish Nation, and there he began to strengthen his relationship with the then leader of the formation, Santiago Abascal. When the current leader of Vox was still part of the Popular Party, Ortega Smith worked with him on several legal cases and represented him in the National Court, back in 2012, after Abascal suffered attacks by some nationalists in Llodio.

Over the years, both have built a relationship of trust that was forged with iron when Vox was a fledgling project and Ortega Smith traveled the country from end to end in search of support and militants.. So close is the friendship of these two “compadres” (this is how Santiago Abascal himself referred to their relationship in October last year), that the Vox leader offered Ortega to be his daughter's godfather. He, of course, accepted the offer.. During the first years of the project, before the Catalan conflict catapulted it politically, the lawyer “collapsed” to move it forward. But his peak moment in the formation came with the trial of the procés, when, according to Abascal, “he led the battle against the coup plotters.”

The anti-Catalanism of the far-right formation began to bear its electoral fruits as a result of the 2017 pro-sovereignty process, which gave Vox the opportunity to appear as a popular accusation in the trial of the procés. Beyond being a turning point for the formation of Abascal, that procedure was the greatest achievement of Javier Ortega Smith as a lawyer.

Thanks to his role as a lawyer in the popular accusation, the media spotlight settled on him like never before, giving him an unprecedented role in his political career.. Seating the members of the procés on the bench, whom he considers the greatest “enemies of Spain”, was for him a far greater feat than the administrative issues and compensation that he had had to deal with in his career as a lawyer.

In 2019 he was number two on the Vox lists for Congress and led the candidacy for the Madrid City Council, obtaining a position as councilor in the Consistory. And in October of last year, when relations with Santiago Abascal were going through their most tense moment, the Vox leader dismissed him as general secretary of the party at the same time that he confirmed his re-election as a candidate in the Madrid City Council.. In addition, Ortega became vice president of the party and responsible for the legal actions of the parliamentary group in Congress.

His relationship with Almeida, who may be vital in the face of the next legislature, was definitively clouded when the Vox man denied the mayor support for the 2022 budgets. All based on the great point of disagreement between the two: Central Madrid. “It all boils down to Javier Ortega being able to circulate with his vehicle on Gran Vía,” Almeida reproached him at the end of 2021, when those budgets were being negotiated.

When the mayor approved a new mobility ordinance with the support of four former Más Madrid councilors and in line with state and European legislation, Smith accused him of breaking his word. And it's been like that ever since. “Faced with the great lie of contamination, we have studied the data rigorously and solvently. […] The result has been overwhelming, confirming that Madrid has a very good air quality”, assures the candidate in one of his latest Instagram posts. But there is a message that Smith wants to send above all: “The best way to monitor is from within the Government, so that the mayor has more difficulty lying and deceiving the people of Madrid.”

From the rock, the Chinese virus or the perroflautas

Throughout his political career, Ortega Smith has starred in multiple controversies, marking a tough profile. Among them are the occasions on which he has been seen or read praising the figure of the recently exhumed José Antonio Primo de Rivera.. The first signs of the lawyer's admiration for the founder of the Falange date back to 1986, although the latest evidence is little more than four years old.. In November 2018, when a dinner held with some supporters of the party was coming to an end, Vox's number two got up to give a speech to those present.

Among his words he included a confession: “José Antonio Primo de Rivera for me is one of the great men in history, a magnificent lawyer, a magnificent patriot, a great political ideologue and who in his time knew how to respond to the needs that were they required him at that moment, that he faced, as we are all facing, the enemies of the homeland”.

In 2016, Ortega Smith reached the pinnacle of his testosterone patriotic exploits by swimming from La Línea de la Concepción to Gibraltar to plant a gigantic flag of Spain on the Rock. The so-called 'Operation Tarzan' was, in effect, a carefully thought out plot by Ortega Smith in collaboration with six other people. The lawyer had to go to sea because he has a search and capture order issued by the British Justice as a result of an action carried out in 2014.

And precisely in the framework of the pre-campaign for the elections this May, the Vox candidate has taken the opportunity to bring out his most belligerent profile. One of his most controversial performances took place in mid-April, when he posted a video on his networks in which he appears arguing with some alleged squatters.. “Where is the perroflauta?”, he asks a neighbor. He finds him leaning out on a terrace and questions him.

“Are you the owner, do you have a contract? Look at the calendar, on May 28 I'm coming here with the Municipal Police and you're going to look for a house [the discussion continues] How clear? I'll go up and explain it to you.”

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