The story of Vox since its birth in Andalusia in 2018 is a story of growth. But also of internal crises, bad moods and fallen figures. With the party rising in the polls, no alternative to Santiago Abascal has crystallized in Vox or on its fringes, but a group of those disillusioned with his leadership maintains continuous activity from critical positions. Although they do not constitute an organized movement, there are links between them. Who are they? Among others, former congressional spokesmen Iván Espinosa de los Monteros and Macarena Olona; former Madrid party president Rocío Monasterio; former parliamentarians Víctor Sánchez of Real, Rubén Manso, Juan Luis Steegmann, Francisco Contreras and Mazaly Aguilar.
The one with the most prominence is Espinosa de los Monteros. After his resignation from the collection of the minutes of the 2023 general elections – isolated in the face of the rise of the most fundamentalist sector of the party, personified by Jorge Buxadé – he was the protagonist of several events together with other critics, such as a year ago the screening of a film that made it possible to extol the virtues of Ronald Reagan as the type of leader that Spain needs or the presentation in September of the Atenea ideas laboratory, of which he is president and whose leader is the former deputy Francisco Contreras. From Atenea, Espinosa proposes to Vox a change of direction that facilitates agreements with the PP, while at the same time weaving complicity with emerging figures of the far right such as the agitator Vito Quiles.
At the presentation of think tank Rocío Monasterio, his wife, came from Espinosa; former parliamentarians Sánchez del Real, Rubén Manso and Mazaly Aguilar; and Rep. Javier Ortega Smith, who last week was removed as Vox’s deputy spokesperson in Congress, a decision that culminates the estrangement between him and Abascal. If Espinosa is the most important of the unemployed critics – even if he is still part of it -, the lawyer Ortega Smith is one of the critics who remains in the front row of the far-right party, since he is a deputy, spokesperson of the Madrid City Council and leader.
Ortega Smith’s entourage emphasizes that he does not lead any current or critical group. “Javier’s opinions are personal, he does not represent anyone and does not direct anything,” says a source close to the MP. Indeed, neither Espinosa nor Ortega are recognized as references or leaders of the discontented. Not them, not anyone else. If they were a troop, they would be a troop without a captain. Which is not to say that no praise is spared for the now former deputy spokesperson. “He is a great worker, a pillar of Vox,” former Badajoz MP Sánchez del Real, former deputy secretary for Communications at Vox, says on the phone of Ortega Smith, who after not being on the lists in the last general elections has returned to his work as a professor and consultant.
In Sánchez del Real there is a widespread trait in this sector: the rejection of what they consider an internal functioning that rewards adherence to the leader at the expense of the critical contribution made by knowledge. He claims that the aforementioned former leaders and former parliamentarians have something in common: a “prior professional career” that gives them a job to return to and a culture of professionalism.
Wary of the influence in the party of the media figure Julio Ariza and the negligence of the “liberal-conservative” ideology, Sánchez del Real is moderate in his reproaches of the party of which he continues to belong, but underlines that no one ever told him why he did not run and that following his departure he suffered “attacks” from his own ranks. The former leader says he is only trying to defend the ideas he already defended in 2013, when he was involved in the movements that shaped Vox. This is also very widespread throughout the critical sector: no one declares they want to engage in any internal battle.
Vox did not respond to EL PAÍS’ questions.
“New ideas”
Another former MP far from the current Vox is Francisco Contreras, who held a seat in Seville until 2023. An exponent of climate denialism during his time in Congress, this professor of Philosophy of Law is now leader of both Atenea and NEOS, the foundation led by former PP minister Jaime Mayor Oreja, who like Espinosa aspires to change the course of Vox to facilitate collaboration with the popular ones. Unlike Real’s Sánchez, Contreras, who maintained his affiliation with Vox in July, was not removed from the lists. He was on the ballot as number two, but didn’t make it. In his public messages, he combines support for Vox with diplomatic criticism of a party for which he proposes “new ideas” and which, he says, “shot itself in the foot” by excluding Rubén Manso from the lists.
Inspector on leave from the Bank of Spain, consultant to the management of a financial services office, Manso is another exponent of this sector with experience in the associative world, in his case as president of the Centro Diego de Covarrubias, a laboratory of ideas “in defense of Christian liberalism”. He is usually grouped together with Espinosa and Sánchez del Real in the liberal (or ultraliberal) wing of Vox, a party of which he is no longer a member, he explains over the phone. He does not feel part of any group or current, nor does he have “principled” plans to return to the partisan arena, but he claims to share with the rest of the critics a “high interest in politics” despite the “disappointment” towards a party in “evident ideological drift”. “We continue to have our say, to participate, to appear, but from the sidelines,” says the former MP from Malaga, who claims the professional value of those who support Abascal with a depth charge: “Having a lifestyle is a handicap in politics, where you want people whose life depends on the leader.”
Manso is close to Sánchez Real and retired doctor Juan Luis Steegmann, a former Real Madrid MP and former leader. In this case it is different: it was Steegmann who slammed the door in August 2023, resigning from the seat that corresponded to him after the resignation of Espinosa de los Monteros and also abandoning the national leadership, all before leaving the party in 2024 due to his “illiberal”, “anti-scientific” and close to “neophalangism” line. Full-time critic of a Vox that he no longer recognizes, incisive against the weight in the party of Julio Ariza and Kiko Méndez-Monasterio —adviser and friend of Abascal—, Steegmann is the target of attacks from the far right, inside and outside Vox, for his favorable position on vaccines during the covid pandemic.
He gets up and falls
The one who fell from the top rungs was Mazaly Aguilar, whose exclusion from the 2024 European list meant the purge of Vox’s most important position in the EU, since she was vice-president of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee. In front of Buxadé, head of the party’s European delegation, Aguilar openly criticizes the party’s leadership. “The Vox I knew was not born for this,” he said when the party abandoned Giorgia Meloni’s Conservatives and Reformists group and joined Viktor Orbán’s Patriots for Europe.
First of all, the protagonist of a traumatic exit was Macarena Olona, who after a result below expectations for her candidacy in Andalusia in 2022 announced her abandonment of politics in full tension with the national leadership. Since then, his speech has been very harsh on Abascal, even going so far as to accuse the party of being an “employment agency”. From Ortega Smith to Espinosa de los Monteros, passing through Sánchez del Real, Rubén Manso, Steegmann or Mazaly Aguilar, it is normal for those who come into conflict with the national leadership to receive public support from Olona.
Even Idoia Ribas, who was Vox’s parliamentary spokesperson in the Balearic Parliament and who after leaving the group in July, with the community party in crisis, said that her previous formation was “a pyramid scam”. Ribas is now president of the Avanza en Libertad association, which he aspires to spread throughout Spain.
More discreet is the position of two retired soldiers signed by Vox and who did not end well. After being MP for Cadiz until 2023 and not repeating himself in the lists that year, Agustín Rosety left Vox in February this year due to Abascal’s “following” of Donald Trump. “Authoritarianism and dogmatism have grown at Vox,” he said. Antonio Budiño, party leader for Pontevedra in the two 2019 general elections, exploded at being accused after holding Abascal to account this year. “Those of us who were loyal were left out; those who were servile were rewarded,” he denounced.
The political scientist Eli Gallardo, author of The year we voted dangerously (Rapitbook, 2024) and careful observer of the changes introduced in Spanish politics by the new parties, underlines the fact that there are a handful of critics of Abascal who maintain political visibility and attention on social networks despite multiple contrary factors: not only do they not formally constitute a current, but they lack a leader recognized as such, and they also oppose the line of a party that thrives in the polls. In his opinion, the fact that despite all this they enjoy a space is symptomatic of the “growth of the far-right terrain, in which there is room for more and more actors”.
The consultant believes that those who today strive to identify themselves as critics, establishing bonds with each other, are committed to the future. “Even if now is not the time because Vox’s prospects are good, it is important to remain alive and well positioned for a possible reconfiguration of the space in the future, when options may arise both for changes in Vox leading to the recovery of former leaders and deputies, and for new parties,” he argues.
To date, two new far-right parties have emerged after Vox, Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF) and Aliança Catalana, gaining representation in the European Parliament and Parliament respectively. But so far those created by former Vox members disillusioned with their management have failed to take off. And there have been many attempts. There are at least six cases: Caminando Juntos —that of Macarena Olona—, TúPatria, España Suma, Valores, Juntos por España and Libres. None pose a threat to Abascal, whose critics will still have to wait.
