Vox's 33 leave Abascal without numbers for the legal battle or faces for the cultural war
Vox's electoral skid has plunged the party into a resounding silence that has lasted a week. No formation has lost as much as that of Santiago Abascal, who, despite setting his ground at three million voters, falls back sharply in Congress, where he will lose almost all the prominence he had during the last legislature and is forced to change his parliamentary strategy. if he does not want to be overshadowed by a Popular Party that wins 48 seats and dyes the bench on the right of the chamber blue.
The 52 of Vox are already history. The party concentrated the media focus on its chamber group during the last legislature, since it did not have representation or influence in a large part of the regional parliaments. A handicap that Vox solved on 28-M by becoming the party that grew the most, but which is now moving to Congress, where it narrowly maintains third place against Sumar, but falls 19 seats after losing more than 600,000 votes. The 33 deputies that will make up the Vox parliamentary delegation are not few, but they are insufficient to continue with the striking political contest that the party was playing up to now in the Lower House.
There are two levels that Vox falls significantly below: with less than 50 deputies it is impossible to go to the Constitutional Court to denounce the legislation that passes through Congress. In the last four years, Vox had broken all records by presenting 48 appeals for unconstitutionality before this body.. A legal weapon to stand up to sanchismo that Vox will surely miss now.
The other parliamentary tool that Vox has used in recent times and that it will no longer be able to use is the motion of censure, for the presentation and registration of which it needs 35 deputies. Throughout the last legislature, those of Santiago Abascal have activated this mechanism on two occasions: in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, with Abascal himself as a candidate, and in 2023 after the reform of the Penal Code, with Ramón Tamames as a candidate.. Both failed with the only support of the Vox deputies but they were worth Abascal to concentrate media focus, portray the PP and directly confront Pedro Sánchez as the only real opposition to the left and the independence movement.
None of this will be possible from now on, which seriously damages the party, which made its great workhorse of its legal fight against the process that allowed the party to reach Congress. But the legal dimension is not the only plane in which the party loses strength: the new parliamentary group, more due to absences than presences, ends up in Congress without the great profiles in social and economic matters that allowed Vox to maintain a harsh tone against the coalition Executive and its ministers.
Outside the Chamber
Vox's electoral misstep has left out of Congress, for example, one of its main spokespersons in recent times against gender ideology, a fundamental pillar of the party in regards to the cultural battle: Carla Toscano rose to fame thanks to to his continuous and direct confrontation with the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, whom he came to accuse of “liberating rapists”. “The only merit he has is having studied Pablo Iglesias in depth,” he launched last November at the leader of Podemos in one of the most tense plenary sessions of the legislature.
Along the same path, important parliamentarians such as Inés Cañizares, deputy spokesperson for the group after the abrupt departure of Macarena Olona, or Mireia Borrás, spokesperson for energy matters and a critical voice against Montero, are left out of the chamber.. Also JuanLuis Steegman, the party's renowned health spokesman, highly criticized by sectors of the electorate opposed to the mandatory nature of the vaccination process.
Borrás belonged, like Víctor Sánchez del Real or Rubén Manso -who directly disappeared from the lists-, to the most liberal sector of the party, predominant in the parliamentary group. With its faults, Vox loses its economic profile in the Lower House and weakens the project led by Iván Espinosa de los Monteros for the last four years. As this newspaper has been reporting in recent months, the very design of the lists already reinforced the toughest sectors of Vox, led by Jorge Buxadé, and cornered the most liberal side.
The party recomposes its parliamentary group with important bets: Pepa Millán, the main Vox figure in the Senate in recent months, enters the Lower House. The party also recovers Jacobo Robatto, who was also a senator and designed the Andalusian campaign a year ago. And Ignacio Hoces arrives from Badajoz, a new strong man in the leadership of the party and in the hard core of Abascal.
WHO FALLS AND WHO RISES IN A RENEWED PARLIAMENTARY GROUP
Carla Toscano.
Scourge of the Ministry of Equality and gender policies. She was the deputy who most confronted Irene Montero. Now she is a councilor in the Madrid City Council.
Mireia Borras.
He gained weight after the departure of Olona but was cornered in the lists when he fell to eleventh place for Madrid, four below 2019. His future at Vox is unknown.
Juan Luis Steegman.
If there is any way out among the Madrid deputies, he will be the first to access Congress. Highly criticized by the sector of the Vox electorate against vaccines.
Pepa Millan.
Vox 'revelation' senator, will be one of the youngest in the new Congress. The dome has clearly bet on her for months. He will have a prominent role in the group.
'Coco' Robato.
He returns to the front line after months of low profile as a party plumber. He was a senator and designed the failed Macarena Olona campaign in Andalusia in 2022.
Ignacio Hoces.
One of the new strong men in the hard core of the party. budding management advisor. Vox's entry into the Junta de Extremadura reinforces its organic role.