Vox presented the Congress plenary with a formidable compendium of its most xenophobic theses this Wednesday. Its Extremaduran deputy Ignacio Hoces held nothing back, not even cheering almost like heroes those who “defended our identity” by chanting “Muslim if you don’t jump” in the last Spanish national football team’s match against Egypt. And the PP? A mixed bag. In the debate, the popular party had nothing to say about these gems. What was being discussed was a Vox motion that openly advocated for repatriating all irregular immigrants and depriving them of healthcare assistance except for emergencies. PP deputy Carmen Navarro delivered yet another speech against PSOE’s corruption and delicately avoided any controversy with her regional partners. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party’s rejection was later manifested in a quieter way: by voting no, along with the rest of the Chamber.
After closing the Extremaduran pact, Vox wanted to force the PP to speak out in Congress about its constant stigmatization of immigrants. Feijóo’s party tried to evade by presenting an alternative, softer text, but one in which they assumed the thesis of “national priority” in access to aid and public services, in line with what was agreed to make the popular María Guardiola president of Extremadura. Vox did not accept it. “Your amendment reflects the philosophy of the pact in Extremadura, but this is the national Congress,” Hoces argued. “It’s not philosophy, it’s the literalness of the pact,” Navarro retorted. It was the only hint of disagreement that the popular deputy slipped after listening to a speech that reeked of the ultra-international’s speculations about the Great Replacement, the supposed conspiracy to replace white populations with immigrants from other cultures.
Hoces’s intervention sounded halfway between dystopian literature and lysergic ramblings. Spain is plunged into “migratory anarchy,” “millions of Spaniards feel like strangers in their own country” and suffer the “accelerated transformation of our very being.” The Government has inoculated “hatred of our own” and caused the “collapse of the welfare state.” The country has become the “hospital of Africa and America.” And against this hecatomb, Vox rises with its defense of “national priority,” summarized by Hoces thus: “The first duty of a Spaniard is to protect Spaniards first; the second, also; and the third, also.”
The ultra spokesman anticipated that what his party has “achieved” in Extremadura will be extended “to all regions of Spain.” He did not spare some jabs at the PP for having handed the golden key of Madrid to Colombian president Gustavo Petro. Because the same party that often praises Francoism maintains that Petro, democratically elected and who is preparing to leave power after fulfilling his constitutional mandate, is a “dictator.” Hoces repeated this on Wednesday, following in the footsteps of his group’s deputy spokesman, José María Figaredo, who last week had already extended the dictatorial qualification to Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Carmen Navarro listened to all that from her seat and went up to the speakers’ rostrum almost at the same time that in Mérida her colleague Guardiola was invested with the votes of the far-right. In the popular deputy’s first words, the term “priority” emerged, though in a very different sense from the subject of debate: “Since they came to power [the socialists] they have had two priorities: first to steal and then to cover up what was stolen.”
What followed was a long digression to avoid talking about what was relevant. Navarro went through the great hits of her party’s discourse: Begoña Gómez, José Luis Ábalos, the lack of Budgets, child poverty, the state of railway infrastructure… With the seasoning of attacks on the Speaker of the Chamber, Francina Armengol, absent at that moment, of whom Navarro, as fourth secretary, is a colleague on the Board and whom the popular party insists on implicating in the Koldo case. She only dealt with immigration to deplore the regularization process. The “national priority,” which her group had assumed in writing in the amendment rejected by Vox, she did not even mention.
Part of the Chamber ignored the debate. The deputies of ERC, Junts, and EH Bildu completely boycotted it. Mikel Legarda, from PNV, intervened briefly from his seat to warn that Vox’s proposals go against the “European civilizational heritage.” The ultras heard accusations of racism from Candela López, of Sumar; Martina Velarde, of Podemos, and Àgueda Micó, of Compromís. The socialist Juan Francisco Serrano presented himself as a “son of immigration” to contrast with Hoces, “son of a duke.” Since no one here does anything without a reason and elections are approaching in Andalusia —the groups are giving their deputies from that community a break these days—, Serrano used the rest of the time to denounce the state of social services under the regional PP government.
Given what was seen and heard —also the insinuations that the popular party had been making since the previous day in the corridors—, the forecasts were that the PP would abstain. But betting on Feijóo’s public positions is a risky sport. At the rostrum, not a single criticism. In the privacy of the seat, the red box of no.
