Santiago Abascal founded Vox in 2014 and surrounded himself with a group of leaders loyal to the new project who helped him promote far-right formation and implement it throughout Spain. Ten years later, from that first stage there are hardly any vestiges of those who formed that first ‘hard core’. The majority of those who accompanied him on his adventure have either been purged by Abascal or have ended up leaving the party.
The last to do so has been Roció Monasterio, the former Vox spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly, whom Abascal decided just a few weeks ago to remove with a stroke of a pen as head of training in Madrid to replace her with José Antonio Fúster, whom the leader has begun to rise after putting him in charge of the national spokesperson for the formation.
Unlike her husband – Iván Espinosa de los Monteros left his position as spokesperson in Congress without a single criticism of his colleagues or Abascal himself – Monasterio slammed the door, reproaching the leadership of his party for the lack of internal democracy and the authoritarianism that has presided over everything in Vox for a long time. To his departure we must add many other previous leaders who helped Abascal or founded Vox, such as Macarena Olona, the former MEP Mazaly Aguilar, the doctor and former MP Juan Luis Steegmann or Juan or Pedro Fernández, who was Ortega’s own right arm. Smith at Madrid City Hall.
The latter is, precisely, one of the few leaders who remains active and holds positions in the extreme right party, and Abascal stripped him of the position of vice president and before that of general secretary to relegate him to a simple member of the Executive in the last Extraordinary Assembly held last January. The strong rumors that existed at the time that the municipal spokesperson for Vox and deputy for Madrid were trying to put together an alternative candidacy to Abascal’s with a group of critics were then buried.
The maneuver was interpreted as an effective way for the Vox leader to abort the alleged plans that Ortega Smith always denied and from which Espinosa de los Monteros also distanced herself, whose abrupt departure shook the foundations of the far-right party and uncovered the internal struggle. that there was for its control between two factions: the most ‘liberal’, embodied by Espinosa de los Monteros himself, and the ultra-conservative and ‘opusian’ one led with an iron hand by MEP Jorge Buxadé, who despite also losing stripes in the new organizational chart continues to lead the Vox delegation in Brussels and pull the strings of the training.
When Espinosa de los Monteros left, Ortega Smith clearly positioned himself on the side of his “dear friend and companion Iván.” In a message on his X profile, he regretted his decision to resign, but “much more the reasons” that had caused it, without specifying what they were. Then he praised his dedication to the party: “You have fought tirelessly since the founding of Vox with loyalty, generosity and sacrifice. Although some have not been able to admit it to you, the vast majority of us owe you an unpayable debt of patriotism.” “We will continue fighting for the same principles and values for which together we launched this project at the service of Spain and freedom. Always by your side”, he said goodbye.
The party and Abascal himself have always tolerated that the spokesperson in the Madrid City Council was free, ignoring his criticism of the management, which have not been few. For example, when he warned that “the party could not be a placement agency for cronies.” That desire for outsider led him to be relegated to a testimonial role within the formation. So much so that in the last municipal elections Abascal doubted whether to keep him as a candidate for the Madrid City Council, where his work had not stood out much either. In the end she repeated, like Rocío Monasterio, as a candidate for the Community of Madrid. In the general classification, Madrid also managed to stay on the list, which was the leader, although it went from second place to fourth.
His constant controversies as municipal spokesperson have not gone unnoticed and have not always been applauded by his people. From his confrontation with the ‘manteros’ shouting in the El Retiro Park in Madrid, or with the squatters of a property in a Madrid municipality – episodes that he himself was in charge of uploading to the networks through videos –, to planting face to the National Police a year ago, during the demonstrations encouraged by Vox against Pedro Sánchez’s amnesty law on Ferraz Street – headquarters of the PSOE –, whom he reproached for their actions. “You are going to be left wanting to make arrests,” he rebuked the riot police, to whom he recommended that they practice “with the bag.” “Agents, I’m sorry, but today you are not going to be able to strike, you are going to be left wanting. “I’m leaving,” he concluded then.
The most notorious was, however, the attack on the councilor of Más Madrid, Eduardo Rubiño, who in a municipal plenary session threw a bottle of water on his papers. Afterwards, he blurted out “now, cry,” according to what the left-wing councilor himself later said. All parties, except Vox, demanded that Ortega Smith hand over his council record due to his “inappropriate” and “violent” behavior. “It is a very sad day and it is an unacceptable aggression,” said the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, who charged against Ortega Smith, considering that “he was no longer qualified to represent the people of Madrid as a whole.”
Although his party did not join in this disapproval, there was no strong defense of his person either. Vox, which had shortly before requested the immediate resignation of the socialist councilor Daniel Viondi after touching the face of the mayor of the capital several times in another municipal plenary session – a resignation that the socialist materialized after two hours –, endorsed his continuity. But Abascal limited himself to reproaching the PP for “playing into the victimhood of the left” without a word of support for its municipal spokesperson.
In this new legislature Ortega Smith is trying to recover part of his lost prominence within Vox. The recent ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) that forces Almeida’s PP to rectify The restrictions imposed in Madrid Central have given him wings and oxygen. The Madrid spokesperson took the opportunity to score the goal, since it was the result of a complaint from his municipal group. A few days ago he walked through Madrid aboard a van with slogans against “the Madrid Central of ‘Carmeida’” – as he continues to nickname the mayor, mixing his name with that of Manuela Carmena – shouting “Almeida, trilero, return now the money.”
Despite everything, he has not been able to avoid distancing himself from Abascal’s threats to break with the PP in all city councils, in addition to destroying all the governments that they shared with those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in several autonomous communities.
In Congress he is also seen to be more active, with furious interventions against the PP and the PSOE, many of them on citizen insecurity and against immigration. However, those who know the ins and outs of the party point out that Ortega Smith remains there because of his former friendship with Abascal, who does not dare to remove him. Furthermore, they highlight that the Madrid deputy and councilor no longer has influence in the national leadership as a member nor is he in charge of the party’s legal affairs as in the past.
Ortega Smith is the spokesperson for Vox in the Justice Commission and some of his colleagues point to him, among others, as responsible for Vox supporting the amendment to the law that validates sentences served abroad for those who have pending sentences in Spain , from which some ETA prisoners will also benefit. Both the PP and Vox later accused the Government of “deception”, but they saw no problems until that moment and even defended the reform in both the Justice Commission and the Plenary Session.
The abrupt departure of Rocío Monasterio as spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly has now left Ortega Smith as the last exponent of the ‘historical Vox’, those who founded the party and who little by little have been abandoning the leader or have seen how This relegated them in favor of other leaders who, like José Antonio Fúster, are faithful to the new direction.
Ortega Smith has almost three years of his term left, but few would put their hand in the fire because one day he would not get fed up and decide to follow in the footsteps of the other colleagues who founded Vox and have been ignored by Abascal.
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