Vox will begin in September the last political term before the 2027 municipal elections weaker than ever in the Madrid City Council. Of the five councilors it won at the polls three years ago, only Arantxa Cabello and Fernando Martínez Vidal remain within the municipal group. Left out are Javier Ortega Smith, expelled after months of confrontation with the national leadership, and now the two councilors who supported him, Carla Toscano and Ignacio Ansaldo. The Presidency of the Plenary closed the administrative process on August 7 and agreed to “take note of the expulsion” of both, who now have “the status of non-attached councilors,” according to the resolution published last Friday, August 14, in the Official Bulletin of the Madrid City Council (BOAM).
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The far-right party thus remains just at the limit to keep its own group. The Organic Regulation of the Plenary requires a minimum of two councilors to retain the organizational, political, and budgetary advantages of that group. Although Ortega Smith, Toscano, and Ansaldo are the majority among the five elected in 2023, the rule establishes that when the majority leaves the formation or is expelled, those who remain in it are “the legitimate members of said political group for all purposes.”
Vox will carry its crisis in the capital throughout the last political term before the May 2027 elections. The origin of the conflict lies in the confrontation between Ortega Smith and the national leadership. The former secretary general and vice president of Vox had been losing influence within the party until the break also extended to the Madrid City Council. The leadership tried to remove him from the municipal spokesperson position and replace him with Cabello, a decision Ortega Smith rejected. Toscano and Ansaldo sided with him, and the division ended up splitting the group in two.
The conflict took a new step in February. The national leadership communicated to the City Council the suspension of rights of Toscano and Ansaldo, which added to the measure already taken against Ortega Smith, and requested that Cabello be recognized as the new spokesperson. The City Council rejected the request and kept “the structure and number of members of the Vox Municipal Group (five) unchanged.” On April 15, the party communicated the firm expulsion of Ortega Smith, Toscano, and Ansaldo and demanded that the three become non-attached and that Cabello and Martínez Vidal remain as the only members of the group.
Toscano and Ansaldo took their expulsion to the courts and requested as a precautionary measure that its application be suspended, which halted the municipal procedure. Both later withdrew the precautionary measures, and Vox requested on July 22 that the file be reactivated. Ansaldo submitted allegations on August 7, but the General Secretariat dismissed them. The resolution now concludes that Vox proved that the expulsion was adopted by “the competent body of the political party,” that “the established procedure was followed,” and that the decision meets formal requirements. The City Council does not enter “into the examination of the substance of the expulsion agreement nor its substantive legality,” matters that correspond to the party itself and, if applicable, to the courts.
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The move to non-attached does not remove Ortega Smith, Toscano, and Ansaldo from municipal activity. The three retain their seats and can participate in plenary sessions and committees, although they no longer have the rights associated with belonging to a group. Vox, for its part, will have to reorganize with two councilors and fewer resources. The resolution orders the technical services to initiate “the necessary procedures to adopt the appropriate adjustment measures” derived from the expulsions.
Ortega Smith left the Vox Municipal Group at the beginning of July and, two weeks later, also left the party’s parliamentary group in Congress to join the Mixed Group. In a letter addressed to Abascal, he explained his break with the leadership: “I have come to the definitive conclusion that there is no possibility of changing things from within.” He also accused the leadership of having “betrayed” the party’s founding values and ideas. “This is as far as we have come, president,” he concluded. He has not ruled out promoting a new political project either.
This is not the first time an internal crisis has broken a municipal group in Cibeles. The most recent precedent was even more dramatic. Ciudadanos, which governed Madrid last term in coalition with the PP and had 11 councilors, arrived in April 2023 in ruins: six of its councilors had decided not to continue in Begoña Villacís’s party just 48 days before the municipal elections. Four finally left the municipal group and finished the term as non-attached.
Two years earlier, another split had occurred, although with a different course. Marta Higueras, José Manuel Calvo, Luis Cueto, and Felipe Llamas left Más Madrid after their differences with the sector led by Rita Maestre and created the Recupera Madrid movement. The General Secretariat of the Plenary allowed them to form the Mixed Group, but the judiciary later annulled that decision. In February 2023, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) ratified the annulment and determined that the councilors should be considered non-attached.
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