—The decision, besides being wrong, seems unfair to me.
When they invite him in CopeJavier Ortega Smith, founder of Vox, does not hide the open wound he has carried with him since he was ousted from the position of deputy spokesperson of the ultra formation in the Congress of Deputies. Stripped of the purple of power, the politician publicly expresses his protest, thus widening the distance that separates him from the leader, Santiago Abascal, and surrounding his future in Madrid, where he remains spokesperson and mayor of the capital, with doubts. As a source who knows perfectly well the depths of the far-right formation said: “I think he has no chance of anything (facing the next electoral lists). Well, he is just as much an advisor to Toledo to have it under control,” he says. This was the rise and fall of Ortega Smith (Madrid, 57), the man who dreamed of co-governing Madrid as deputy mayor, according to José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP).
October 12, 2025. Abascal takes a step that causes dizziness: despite Felipe VI presiding over the parade on the occasion of the National Day, the leader of Vox decides not to attend the authorities’ gallery, nor the subsequent reception at the Royal Palace, because he understands that it serves to “whitewash” the government of Pedro Sánchez (PSOE). The ultra leader experiences the day at street level, accompanied by his closest companions. Ortega Smith is not among them. Worse still: he is on the rostrum of authorities, like, for example, the presidents of the Cortes of Castilla y León and of the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, also of ultra education, whose presence is justified by his institutional role.
This discordant note only clouds the score drawn by Vox’s strategists, who aspire, according to a source close to the party’s internal affairs, to “absolute” control of the spokespersons’ public discourse and the staging of their roadmap.
“No rating,” Abascal says the next day about the rudeness. Ortega Smith, who did not want to speak to EL PAÍS for this report, has just made his latest misstep.
It is a divorce that must necessarily be painful. Ortega Smith was the Abascals’ lawyer when Vox didn’t exist yet. Ortega Smith is the godfather of one of Abascal’s daughters. Ortega Smith was the image of that first Vox that made its way starting in 2015, with third party toasts, Spanish capes, hunting photographs and shooting exercises. Ortega Smith was a politician with one voice and one vote, decisive in Madrid, since it depended on him to carry forward the coalition government formed by the PP and Ciudadanos, with Martínez-Almeida at the helm, between 2019 and 2023. Ortega Smith was “friend, comrade and compadre”, according to Abascal’s definition, in 2022. And Ortega Smith was so rooted in the hard core of the party that he was its general secretary, the vice president and one of their most recognizable faces. Until now.
“We believe in the strength of the Vox brand, far beyond who leads or is on a list,” says a political source who has Abascal’s complete trust when asked about the possibility of Ortega Smith repeating as capital candidate in 2027. “And his replacement with Carlos H. Quero as deputy speaker is a natural step,” he continues. “We must empower young people who have long defended the main lines of our discourse: immigration, economy, housing, family, youth, national priority…”, he adds. “Look at the potential we have in people like Isabel Pérez, Rocío de Meer, Pepa Millán, Figaredo, Quero, Julia Calvet, Julián Victoria, Ignacio Garriga himself…”, he lists.
Two of Vox’s emerging names coincide at an event in Madrid on Wednesday. These are Pérez Moñino, the woman who replaced Rocío Monasterio as spokesperson of the Regional Assembly, and Quero, Ortega Smith’s replacement as deputy spokesperson of the Congress of Deputies. Together, in an auditorium in Aluche, they open a campaign aimed at winning votes in the red belt of the region by fomenting fear of migrants and insecurity (Madrid South on foot). There they report the miamization from Madrid, a torpedo on the waterline of the speech of Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP). And together they begin a new phase in Vox Madrid in which, predictably, Ortega Smith no longer fits into the role of strong man of the party.
Why Ortega Smith skipped the script. He was the only known face from Vox present at the presentation of Atenea, the think tank by Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, another man who was everything to Vox until he stopped being. He dared to support some of Juan García-Gallardo’s criticisms of the party’s internal functioning when the former vice president of Castilla-León had already left the party. He publicly reminded that Vox had not started out as a friend-placement agency, leaving in the air, without saying so, the insinuation that it was in the process of being one. And he also recently decided to “build bridges” with the PP to create a “national salvation coalition” in the 2027 elections.
“Like in football, the bench moves”
“It’s like in football, where the bench moves,” says Fernando Martínez Vidal, one of his four Vox councilors in the Madrid City Council, about the dismissal of its municipal leader. The councilor says that Smith “seems calm” and suspects that the reaction of the municipal spokesperson, who criticizes the change in Congress’ position, is probably due to the “surprise” of the news because, he senses, “they wouldn’t have warned him”.
In any case, and trying to look ahead, he believes that the reorganization will be positive for training in local politics. “Now he will have more time to dedicate to the City Council,” considers Martínez Vidal.
For his part, Ignacio Ansaldo, another far-right city councilor, stresses that “there will be no change” within the group. “The policies will remain the same,” he says of Vox’s strategy, which has targeted low-emissions areas of the capital.
Ortega Smith, who this week defended Vox’s founding values with a message on social networks that included photos with two politicians who are no longer part of the party, Monasterio and Espinosa de los Monteros, would “love” to continue being the group’s spokesperson in the next legislature. He said this in an interview with Servimedia. But it doesn’t depend on him. The decision will be up to the national executive, which will choose whether the founder of Vox will continue to be number one in the city of Madrid or whether the party will try its luck with another candidate.
Having become the discordant note works against him. In his favor is the bond that unites him to Abascal, older than Vox, and which makes intermediate solutions possible through, for example, a starting place without great praise in the general, regional or municipal lists. This is what the leader said when Ortega Smith began to lose internal power when he left the general secretariat, in 2022: “They have these days to lie, but we have a lifetime to prove that we are still together.”
