2023 has not been a good year for Vox, neither electorally nor economically. However, its foundation, Disenso, has not noticed the slowdown because it has continued to receive from the party the same amounts it has received since its birth and has even allowed itself to spend more money on salaries, activity expenses and contracts with third parties. The rigors of the party are not reflected in the foundation that Santiago Abascal imagined and created in 2020 with his right-hand man, Kiko Méndez Monasterio, and which lives off the subsidies it receives from Vox.
The party’s accounts, sent to its members last June, reveal that in this super-electoral year – with local, regional and general elections – Vox lost two million in income, half of its members did not pay their dues and they had to request a loan of nine million euros from banking entities to be able to carry out the electoral campaigns, which they hoped would then be reimbursed by the public administrations once these elections were over, something that critics of the current leadership describe as “opaque”. As published by El País, the party refused to specify from which banking entity it had requested the loan, although it is obliged by law to make it public.
Despite the economic crisis, the party has continued to make transfers to the political foundation chaired by Abascal himself and to which it has allocated 2.5 million euros per year since 2021. In 2023, it also transferred these same funds to Disenso de Vox, money that comes mainly from members’ contributions and the almost ten million in public money in the form of state subsidies that it receives to finance its activity and which is proportional to the electoral results it obtains. More seats, more money, and vice versa.
The accounts recently published by the Disenso Foundation, those for 2023, reveal that not only has there been no control over spending in the think tank nominally chaired by Santiago Abascal, but that they have been costly in salaries and contracts with third parties and “other expenses.” In total, Disenso had 2.8 million euros – the 2.5 million that the party gives it plus two public subsidies of 150,000 euros and a small surplus from the previous year.
Almost all of it was spent on two items: personnel expenses (1.2 million in 2023 compared to the million that had been spent in 2022) and “other expenses” (1.4 million compared to 1.3 in 2022). Among the latter, “independent professional services” make up the majority. The companies or professionals who took up this article are not revealed, despite requests from critics such as Macarena Olona. Within this item, the 200,000 euros spent by Disenso on rent also stand out.
According to its own accounts, Disenso has 26 employees and only one holds a management position: its director, Jorge Martín Frías (also an MEP since June), who in 2022 earned 85,000 euros and who in 2023 increased his salary to 91,000 euros. The average personnel costs of the think tank is 46,000 euros per worker (the average salary in Spain that year was 26,500 euros). Disenso did not answer elDiario.es if there is anyone who earns more than Martín Frías. The audit specifies that the employers did not receive any compensation or salaries. The board of directors is formed by Santiago Abascal himself, who chairs it. There is also Enrique Cabanas, a friend of Abascal from the time he chaired the Foundation for the Defense of the Spanish Nation (Denaes) financed by the governments of Esperanza Aguirre in Madrid, or Pablo Sáez, treasurer of the party and deputy of Valladolid.
A Vox tool since 2020
Disenso was born in 2020 with a capital contributed by Vox and amounting to 30,000 euros, the legal minimum to be established. Foundations are private non-profit institutions, they enjoy tax advantages and, therefore, the obligation to present balance sheets (those related to the parties are controlled by the Court of Auditors). Among the objectives of Dissidence, considered to be of general interest, are the “promotion of the defense of life and the family”, “the vindication of the heritage of Western civilization” or “the defense of freedom, unity and sovereignty of Spain”. The organization disseminates Vox’s ideology through conferences, training courses, videos and has also been the driving force behind Vox’s relations with far-right leaders such as Javier Milei or Jair Bolsonaro, through the project they call Iberosfera (the Abascal foundation has financed 21 of them). travel in 2023, according to reports).
One of the activities that brought in the most money according to the 2023 accounts was the website of La Gaceta de la Iberosfera, although the foundation itself acknowledges having received the meager amount of 28,000 visits in one year. Furthermore, Disenso subsidized two students from the ISSEP business school, also from the Vox milieu and sponsored by Marine Le Pen’s niece.
Since its creation, Disenso has received nine million euros from the party (at a rate of 2.5 million euros per year, to which must be added the million already transferred so far in 2024, according to Vox’s own accounts). The sums of money that Disenso receives from Vox and its expenses are unusual in the world of party foundations.
Concord and Liberty, the Last think tank of the PP, spent half of what Disenso spent on personnel, according to its latest published balance sheets. It received a million euros less in subsidies and contributions than the far-right foundation. In the case of the Pablo Iglesias Foundation, of the PSOE, it spent half a million on personnel and, in subsidies and donations (it does not specify from whom), it received 500,000 euros in 2022, a fifth from Disenso. In none of their balance sheets does a donation from the party of the magnitude that Vox makes to its foundation appear.
Disenso has not yet responded to elDiario.es’ specific request for information on his accounts and expenses, nor on salaries or the amount he expects to receive from Abascal’s party.
