Simon Hunter
THE candidate for the far-right Vox party at this weekend’s regional elections in the northern Pais Vasco took part in a stunt on Friday that saw him and a group of supporters unfurl a 50-metre-long Spanish flag on the beach in the Basque city of San Sebastian.
Vox had launched a challenge on social media on April 4, stating that if the party picked up 10,000 followers before Sunday’s elections, they would unfurl the Spanish flag – a symbol that is deeply unpopular for many in the Pais Vasco, which has long sought greater autonomy and even independence from Spain.
After the party achieved that target in just ‘four days’, it reported, election candidate Andres Paramio headed up the stunt on the beach on Friday.
Speaking to reporters beforehand, Paramio said that the ‘national flag represents freedom, it represents the presence of Spain in San Sebastian’, and called it a ‘flag that represents a commitment to legal immigration, immigrants who come here to work’.
Read more: Candidate for upcoming elections in Spain’s Basque Country attacked with pepper spray
He also criticised what he called ‘a nationalism that wants illegal immigration, uncontrolled immigration, a total lack of security, a lack of security at our borders, and, of course, the imposition of euskera’, in reference to the Basque language.
Vox, he added, was dead against such policies.
“Vox wants both Basque and Spanish to be vehicular languages in the Pais Vasco, not a vehicular language that is Basque against a language such as Spanish,” he added, echoing the words of party leader Santiago Abascal.
