![[Flag]](../images/e/es}vox.gif)
![[Flag]](../images/e/es}vox1.gif)
Last modified: 2019-01-27 by ivan sache
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Flag of VOX, two versions - Images by Tomislav Todorović, 28 November 2018
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VOX (Latin, "voice") was created in 12 December 2013 "to renovate and
increase the Spanish democratic life, with an aim of increasing the
cohesion of the Nation, to improve the efficiency of the State, to
improve the quality of the institutions, to verify the honesty of public
persons and to foster economical growth to the benefit of all citizens".
To promote "the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation and the grant
of national sovereignty to the Spanish people", VOX proposes to suppress
the Autonomous Communities and to establish "a strong and efficient,
administratively decentralized state able to accommodate and to
recognize the historical and cultural plurality of the Nation".
[Founding Manifesto]
VOX was established by members of the righter wing of the PP,
"disenchanted and disappointed by Mariano Rajoy's non-accomplishment of
the PP electoral program". The founders of VOX are José Antonio Ortega
Lara, a former prisoner of ETA, who left the PP in 2008, Ignacio
Camuñas, an historical leader of the old UCD, and Santiago Abascal, a
former leader of the Basque branch of the PP. This was the second
official split in the PP; in the 2000s, Juan Ramón Calero and Carlos
Ruiz Soto founded the Partido Demócrata Español, which was disbanded in
2008.
[El Confidencial, 15 January 2014]
VOX experienced an internal crisis in spring 2014, when Alejo
Vidal-Quadras, who had left on 27 January 2014 the PP for VOX, resigned
from VOX, together with Camuñas and several members of the party's
National Executive Committee. Santiago Abascal was elected the new
president of the party in a vote considered as rigged by his opponents.
[El Mundo, 16 September 2014]
In June 2016, VOX gained some public attention when a commando displayed
a 200-m long Spanish flag in Gibraltar. The President of the Madrid
branch of VOX, Nacho Mínguez, and the party's lawyer, the writer Pedro
Fernández, were arrested by the Royal Police and detained for a few
days. Abascal complained that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
had not seriously acted to obtain their quick release.
[Libertad Digital, 22 June 2016]
On 10 September 2018, Juan Antonio Morales, Secretary General of the PP
branch of Badajoz, who had been elected on 6 July 2018 at the Parliament
of Extremadura, left the PP for VOX, offering to the party its first
representative in a regional parliament.
[Région Digital, 10 September 2018]
VOX remained considered as a marginal party with little audience but in
the ultra-conservative circles until the meeting held by the party on 7
October 2018 in the Vistalegre Palace, Madrid. The party rallied some
10,000 supporters to prepare the 2019 general elections.
While Abascal presents the party as "central-right liberal", the program
unveiled in Madrid showed its true colors, beyond reasonable doubt, as
did ultra-nationalist, Islamophobic, anti-feminist and homophobic
mottoes shout by their supporters.
[El Confidencial, 7 October 2018; El Mundo, 7 October 2018]
VOX clearly aspires to follow the model of other extreme-rightist
European parties and to occupy the niche left vacant by the
"traditional" Spanish extreme-rightist parties that keep defending a
nostalgic vision of the Francoist state. VOX' main campaign motto
"Spaniards First" is a straightforward translation of "French First",
the motto used in the past by the Front National and recently revamped
to "France and the French First".
In January 2017, Abascal participated to the "Liberty for Europe" summit
held in Coblenz (Germany), where he met his European counterparts:
Marine Le Pen (Front National, France), Frauke Petry (AfD, Germany) and Geert Wilders (PPV, Netherlands) and Matteo Salvini (Liga, Italy).
[Party website, 21 January 2017]
Ivan Sache, 23 November 2018
The flag of VOX is green with the white letters "VOX" (photo, photo, photo, photo). The party also uses a white flag with the green letters "VOX" (photo, photo, photo).
Ivan Sache, 23 November 2018
