The goodbye of Espinosa de los Monteros encourages a rebellion in Vox: "The party is sinking"

The resignation of Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, one of the profiles with the greatest weight and respect inside and outside Vox, has ignited the wick of an incipient internal rebellion from which the management tries to reduce weight while trying to unite its ranks. With few exceptions, such as the loose verse by Macarena Olona, the dome had managed to put an end to the tensions derived from the clash between the two currents that share space and acronyms. But this time, internal differences have come to the surface.. The waterproof match is leaking. And the voices of alarm multiply while they direct their prayers to the only one capable of stopping the “drift” in which, in the opinion of these sources, the formation has embarked. The hard line, fundamentalist and nationalist, has prevailed over the liberal wing. “Abascal must react or the party sinks”, they summarize.

The parliamentary spokesman tried to scare away the ghosts of an internal schism in his farewell speech. did not admit questions. “It's not the day,” he repeated to journalists as he left the press room of Congress, his home since 2019. He alleged family reasons to justify his departure and made himself “available” to the party. “A gentleman to the end”, commented voices close to Espinosa de los Monteros. There were no taunts or veiled messages, although “he had plenty of reasons”, just a long list of thanks. The last one was reserved for Santiago Abascal. His relationship with the Vox leader had cooled in recent months for rowing in favor of the current headed by Jorge Buxadé. His weight in the leadership was diluted in favor of the new faces of the party. His opinions sometimes hit a wall.

The greatest privilege of my professional life has been serving in Congress.

THANK YOU to those who have made it possible, from @Santi_ABASCAL to every last voter. https://t.co/A9dFsH077U

— Iván Espinosa de los Monteros (@ivanedlm) August 8, 2023

Many were not surprised by Espinosa de los Monteros's decision to jump ship. The leader had already conveyed to his circle that he wanted to throw in the towel before the general elections on July 23. The personal component was important, but not the only one. The deputy did not silence his discomfort at the decision of the campaign team, which Buxadé managed in the shadows, to kill some of the most representative figures of the liberal wing of the party. To purge, in short, people you trust. Despite his political weight, Espinosa had little influence in drawing up the lists for Congress, whose decision “bunkered” into a hermetic nucleus made up, in addition to Buxadé, of Ignacio Hoces and Enrique Cabanas..

The sources consulted assure that the parliamentary spokesman had important internal “encounters” over this matter that “were never resolved”.. One of the dismounted is Víctor Sánchez del Real. The deputy for Badajoz in the previous legislature was one of the ideologues of Vox in its beginnings, but it has been losing focus in recent months. The departure of his friend Espinosa has broken his silence on social networks, where he has encouraged critical voices calling for a change of course.

One of them is José Luis Sánchez, president of Vox in Madrid until Rocío Monasterio took over the reins.. On social networks, the former leader called for “self-criticism”, accused the party of a lack of “internal democracy” and asked Abascal to remove Jorge Buxadé, who occupies the party's Deputy Secretary for Political Action and has accumulated power from his power, also taking charge of of the campaign leadership of 28-M. “If not, Vox will disappear,” he warned. Both Sánchez del Real and the former president of Vox Madrid also criticized Abascal's number two for “ignoring” and silencing MEP Mazaly Aguilar in Brussels, where Buxadé leads the Vox delegation in the European Parliament.

That's how it is. https://t.co/eyEyX3b6Qa

– Víctor SánchezdelReal (@sanchezdelreal) August 8, 2023

The party also eliminated from Congress the economist Mireia Borrás and Rubén Manso, who was the guru of the economic-liberal wing of Vox, where Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, as economic spokesman in the Lower House, was the visible head. The rudder shift towards the most protectionist and interventionist postulates was evident. The press conference that the parliamentary spokesman gave together with Jorge Buxadé to present the party's program on this matter for the generals was organized as an attempt to exhibit internal unity after the media noise due to the removal of important positions from the lists. And even at the last rally of the campaign both ironized the open struggle between the two souls of the party. But the movement was understood by some cadres as another attempt by the first deputy secretary to show authority in a field that, to date, Espinosa de los Monteros dominated almost exclusively..

Manso did not take long to open the ban on criticism of Santiago Abascal and the new course of the party towards the ultranationalist sector. He did it through a column in Vozpópuli. “Vox has no future. This party of which many made a caricature that, like all caricatures, was unfair and hyperbolic, has decided to resemble it and not the epic portrait that some, like Espinosa de los Monteros, were painting (…). Vox will be the first non-conventional right-wing party to fail in Europe for having chosen to be what its enemies said it was”, dispatched.

Buxadé and the theory that you have to shut up until the party tells you what you have to say https://t.co/feehnbtHed via @libertaddigital

— Rubén Manso Olivar (@rubenmansolivar) August 8, 2023

Among the laminated deputies there is a entrenched malaise due to the lack of explanations from the leadership about the reasons that led them to do without them. They have also lost contact with Santiago Abascal. “They set us apart for reasons we don't know. The project is left lame by very good people, with very powerful ideas that have been relegated by the advancement of other ideals, by other people,” these sources complain.. According to critics, Abascal must “find balance” and “return to sanity and diversity of criteria”. If it does not, they warn, “it is possible that the party falls”.

The internal schism became clear on Monday morning after Javier Ortega Smith, who was also removed from his position as general secretary and replaced by Ignacio Garriga, published a message on social networks in which he threw a dart at the party and slipped the Real reasons for the resignation of Espinosa de los Monteros. “I am very sorry for your resignation and much more for the reasons that provoke it (…). Although some have not been able to admit it to you, the vast majority have an unpayable debt of patriotism with you”, he launched, in a veiled allusion to the loss of organic weight of the deputy.

Dear colleague and friend @ivanedlm, I am very sorry for your resignation and much more for the reasons that cause it. You have fought tirelessly since the founding of VOX with loyalty, generosity and sacrifice. Although some have not been able to admit it, the vast majority have a… https://t.co/GpbYufXRZp

— Javier Ortega Smith (@Ortega_Smith) August 8, 2023

The resignation of Iván Espinosa de los Monteros also comes after Vox lost 19 seats in the last general elections. The 24 deputies with whom he burst into Congress in 2019 did not fall below his ground, but his setback, together with the insufficient results of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, frustrated the possibility of reaching Moncloa together. According to the sources consulted, the exporter did not make public his determination to step aside to avoid further damage to a party that was already falling in all the polls.. The last straw, according to these voices, was the lack of internal self-criticism after the results.

The party now faces an incipient internal rebellion with a scenario of electoral replay fluttering on the political board.. There are many unknowns to be resolved, such as the new distribution of roles in Congress governed indirectly by Buxadé's right hand in the Lower House, Ignacio Hoces. The departure of Iván Espinosa de los Monteros has more implications than the departure of Macarena Olona, before which the party, including the businessman, closed ranks in an iron manner. Vox is now looking at the endemic evil that, sooner or later, affects the big parties: an internal crisis in which each step can reverberate in their most immediate political future.