Simon Hunter
THE SPOKESPERSON for the conservative Popular Party (PP) has had to make a statement distancing his group from Vox, after the far-right group placed a huge advert in the centre of Madrid in which feminism, the LGBTQ+ flag and the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are seen being thrown into a bin.
Other symbols that are being chucked in the trash include the flag symbolising the Catalan independence drive and the communist hammer and sickle. The hand in the advert is wearing a bracelet with the Spanish flag, which is a symbol that has been claimed by the right.
The slogan on the advert reads: ‘Decide what is important,’ along with the words freedom, security, borders, family, countryside and industry.
Vox was one of the big winners at the May 28 local and regional elections, and is expected to also fare well at the upcoming snap general election on July 23. It is already the third-largest group in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s lower house of parliament, after the governing Socialist Party and the PP.
The latter party, meanwhile, also made gains at the recent polls at the cost of the left and is expected to win the general election. But the two parties have had to do deals on a local level to form governments and will likely have to do the same come July.
The policies of Vox – such as denying climate change and the existence of gender violence – are already proving to be a headache for the PP even ahead of the general elections, which is what prompted PP spokesperson Borja Semper to distance himself from the group.
The PP, he said, ‘does not want to throw anyone in the trash’, and would not be ‘contaminated by aggression’.
Speaking at the presentation of the PP’s election campaign activities on Thursday, Semper said that the party wanted to ‘change the country’ and ‘avoid the incendiary’, according to his comments as reported by Europa Press.
“The styles and objectives of other formations are theirs and we will not allow ourselves to be contaminated by aggressive advertising or unedifying politics,” he added.
The PP’s national leader, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, waded into controversy earlier this week when he was seen to downplay a domestic violence conviction for one of Vox’s politicians in Valencia, attributing the incident to a ‘difficult divorce’.
Read more:
- As general elections approach, conservative Popular Party struggles with uneasy bedfellow Vox
- Spain’s shift to the right consolidated as local councils are formed across the country
- Explainer: What will Spain’s first summer general election mean for voters?
