Vox has been in crisis since losing 19 members of Congress in the last general election. To the unmet expectations during the last electoral cycle – the far right barely gained a few tenths and did not manage to overtake the PP in any of the polls – was added, last spring, the emergence from another ultra party led by the agitator Alvise Pérez, who won three seats in the European Parliament and has since stolen voters from Santiago Abascal’s party. The party’s financial problems and suspicions over its financing also surfaced. All this has led to a turbulent internal climate in which political but also personal disagreements have arisen, which have resulted in dismissals and resignations in recent months.
The last one happened this Thursday. One of the most important and incendiary figures of the party practically since its foundation, Rocío Monasterio, has decided to resign from his position as spokesperson for Vox in the Madrid Assembly and leave politics. He did so less than 24 hours after the party’s national leadership informed him of his resignation as leader of the far right in the region and his replacement by José Antonio Fúster, considered to have a profile still more ultra-conservative than this one. of the architect. As spokesperson for the Assembly, Abascal placed Isabel Pérez Moñino, also aligned with the hard sector. In total, this opens a new internal crisis at Vox, which has accumulated turbulent months.
Concerning the departure of Monasterio, within the party, few were surprised by the decision of Abascal, who was not even the one who communicated it to the former leader but who delegated it to the secretary to the organization of Vox, Ignacio Garriga. For years there has been an internal struggle between the sector led by Monasterio and her husband, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, considered more “liberal”, and another even more extreme, in which the current MEP is usually placed . vice-president Jorge Buxadé, who started in politics in several Falange candidates and is linked to Opus Dei. For the moment it is the latter who is winning the battle, still with the backing of Abascal.
The previous Espinosa
In August 2023, Espinosa resigned. He left his position within the party and his mandate as deputy when he admitted to having lost the confidence of Abascal. The Buxadé sector has always considered him too “soft” and has also accumulated internal criticism of certain parliamentary decisions. Monasterio, who maintained the same struggle with the sector opposed to her husband, remained at the head of Vox in Madrid until this week. But on Wednesday, Abascal’s leadership excluded her from the biological project and, a day later, she decided to leave it, publicly questioning her party’s executive.
Hours before Monasterio’s dismissal became known, the internal crisis was evident in an exchange of X-rated messages between Espinosa de los Monteros and Hermann Tertsch, a Vox MEP aligned with the hardest wing. The former spokesperson criticized Tertsch for his attitude towards the far-right’s favorable vote for the law which includes the validation of foreign convictions, which, from the right, is seen as a transfer of government to EH Bildu, although it is supported by PP and Vox. The MEP, in a previous message, had regretted the “error” but in this same tweet he wanted to recall other “errors” from the time when Espinosa led the Vox parliamentary group.
“I understand the difficulties they are going through, but I regret that the people for whom I have affection are losing their prudence. They probably do it assuming I’m going to maintain it, regardless. In this, they are right. But Vox had the wrong enemy. We have the enemy before us; Don’t pull sides,” Espinosa wrote to Tertsch, in a message in X. This exchange of reproaches could have been the trigger that resulted in Monasterio’s dismissal.
In front of the press, she showed herself this Thursday satisfied with having “contributed to the party since its foundation, when things were difficult, when everyone’s spirit was pure and when the party was distinguished by the solvency of a great number of its members. And he accused the management of having chosen his successor. “Vox Madrid was the only Provincial Executive Committee that remained in Spain, voted and directed by all its members,” he recalled, before criticizing the methods of Abascal’s team in recent years: “The general secretary and the president have the power to appoint the next executive committee of Vox Madrid, thanks to the successive amendments that have been presented to our statute.
His successor as head of Vox in Madrid, José Antonio Fúster, later said he regretted Monasterio’s decision and “his interpretation of how it happened”, without providing further details.
As Monasterio denounced, Abascal’s closest circle – which includes Garriga and Fúster in addition to Buxadé – took control of the party outside of activism, all this in an unfortunate context for Vox, which not only does not is finally taking off as a possible alternative to the PP but is stagnating, according to all the surveys. Seeking to expand his electorate in a context where Alvise Pérez is stealing voters with even more extremist messages, Abascal took the drastic decision in July to leave the five governments autonomous communities that she shared with the popular ones – and not, on the other hand, the dozens of town halls that they share –, alleging that those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo had complied with the government’s demands on immigration by s opening to the reception of migrant children in their autonomy.
Constant withdrawals and terminations
The gesture showed Vox’s internal schism. Immediately after, there was a leak of resignations from institutional and organic positions who did not agree with the breakup. Several regional councilors disobeyed the leader and remained with the governments chaired by those of Feijóo and announced that they were leaving the party. The flow of victims has not stopped since then, although it had already started months before, after the Extraordinary General Assembly held in January, during which the leader was ratified in his functions without internal opposition which, at least, expressed herself publicly as such.
By this time, the party had already begun to experience a notable decline in membership, as seen in 2023 stories published by Vox on its website. Half of the registered members have not paid their subscription. Although the party has nearly 67,000 registered members, only 35,000 are up to date with their payments., which also meant a significant decrease in revenue for Vox that year for this concept.
Precisely that year, Vox received a loan of nine million euros from a Hungarian bank with the aim of financing the various electoral campaigns of that year: regional, municipal and early general elections. Even if at first the far-right party avoided specifying where this money came from, on September 26, the investigative media Vsquare directly pointed the finger at a financial entity: MBH Bank.
It is, according to the same media, “a financial giant resulting from the merger of three entities” and which partly belongs “to Lőrinc Mészáros, the richest businessman in Hungary and childhood friend of Orbán”. In addition, as revealed by elDiario.es on September 30, the Hungarian bank’s main shareholder is Corvinus International Investment, an investment company 100% controlled by the Hungarian state and chaired by Viktor Orbán. It is also one of the companies behind the public takeover bid (OPA) launched by Magyar Vagon for the railway manufacturer Talgo, which the government vetoed for reasons of “national security”. .
Current Spanish legislation – in particular Article 7 of the Law on Parties – establishes that “parties cannot accept any form of financing from foreign governments and bodies, public entities or companies or companies that are directly or indirectly linked to them. .” Vox itself admitted to having been financed, thanks to this nine million loan, by a bank whose main shareholder is the Hungarian state.
Abascal’s “tour”
In the midst of the organic crisis accentuated this Wednesday by the dismissal of Monasterio and faced with the financial problems already mentioned, Abascal’s objective is now to regain lost ground and attract new members and supporters. This is why he has started a sort of “tour” across Spain with which he intends to reconnect with this electorate who may have adhered to Alvise’s project or who are considering voting for the PP. The former manager of Vox in Madrid will return to “private activity”.
“For me, politics has always been an act of service to Spain and the Spanish people. Try to contribute something to society and not as a small position from which to live forever. “I am now returning to my private activity where it is likely that I will build more housing than Ms. Ayuso in four years,” he quipped this Thursday, recalling that he devotes himself to architecture.
