Ramon Tamames, 89, who was a lawmaker in the 1970s and 1980s, has pledged that if the vote were to succeed, his only act as prime minister would be to immediately call for a national election to coincide with a local election already scheduled for May 28. Instead, in an attempt to lure votes from centrist and leftist legislators, Vox convinced a former communist party member and university professor to lead the no-confidence measure. In a move that has been widely panned by other political parties and Spanish media, Vox leader Santiago Abascal has broken with custom and isn't presenting himself as an alternative prime minister. No other party said that it would support the attempt by Vox's 52 lawmakers to topple the Socialist-led government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. The vote will be held in the 348-member lower chamber on Wednesday. Spain's leftist coalition could instead be reinforced by the move that was intended to topple it. Maintaining, with breath-taking effrontery, that the frequency and extent of these corruption scandals proves that the great majority of Partido Popular politicians are in fact endearingly honest (‘Because, you see, it never even crosses our minds that such terrible things might be going on’) has not proved very reassuring.Spain's Parliament set aside the business of lawmaking on Tuesday to hold a marathon debate over a no-confidence motion against the government, which was brought by the nation's far-right Vox party and is expected to fail. Most Spaniards can no longer keep track of all the Partido Popular politicians accused of fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering. Over recent years it has been beset by a plethora of elaborate, interlocking scandals. Perhaps voters also sense that governing in partnership with Vox might help the Partido Popular clean up its act. Not surprisingly, Vox’s leaders have described the Partido Popular as the ‘derechita cobarde’ (the puny and cowardly right). It tried shifting to the centre and it tried shifting to the right, but it only really succeeded in looking shifty. It tried ignoring Vox and it tried attacking Vox. But the emergence of Vox has caused something of an identity crisis for it. For many years the Partido Popular was the country’s only right-wing party, a broad church for free-market liberals, conservatives and erstwhile supporters of General Franco. Above all, Vox proudly upholds traditional Catholic values: ‘the values of your father and your grandfather’.Ī coalition with Vox, then, might help the Partido Popular decide what it really stands for. The party is also highly critical of the wastage and unnecessary bureaucracy in Spain’s 17 regional governments, some of which have become nests of corruption. Vox also takes an uncompromising (the left say xenophobic) position on immigration, is strong on law and order, refreshingly anti-woke and unapologetically proud of Spain’s history, culture and traditional way of life – including hunting and bullfighting. Today, Vox remains committed to national sovereignty and is the most Eurosceptic party in this overwhelmingly Europhile country during one parliamentary debate, Santiago Abascal, the party’s leader, criticised the European Union’s ‘Soviet pretensions’. The party was founded in 2013 by fugitives from the Partido Popular disgusted by its meek compliance with the instruction from the European Court of Human Rights to release convicted Basque terrorists. Vox is not fascist but it is always happy to challenge consensus. The staunchly conservative Vox defends the constitution, participates actively in the democratic process and can plausibly claim to have enriched Spain’s young democracy by representing people who previously didn’t vote because they felt no party spoke for them. ![]() Both the present left-wing government and much of the mainstream media routinely refer to Vox as ‘la ultraderecha’ (the far right) during a recent parliamentary debate one minister described Vox as a ‘banda de fascistas’ (band of fascists). With a Partido Popular-Vox coalition in power, political life in Spain would be radically different. ![]() Prince Harry is having a bruising time in the High Court
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