The so-called liberal sector of Vox has discovered that its dream of turning Spain into a tax haven through a political operation in which religious fundamentalism and extreme Spanish nationalism was going to serve as a shock troop, has come to nothing. A defeat that partly shows that the world of money that promoted the rise of Santiago Abascal's party has already unplugged the hose. Now, it is on the table if this crisis is the first peal at the Vox headquarters of the death chimes that were previously heard at the Ciudadanos headquarters.
Undoubtedly, the electoral and social growth of Vox from 2017 onwards is explained above all as a reaction to the process in Catalonia and the exacerbation of Spanish nationalism in response. But in its founding, economic issues, especially the criticism of public and social spending and especially taxation, played a key role. For this reason, precisely, the now losers in the internal struggle, started by Ivan Espinosa de los Monteros, feel authorized to vindicate their liberal essences. And this economic program, as in the case of Ciudadanos from 2014, is explained by the financial support of certain economic sectors, eager to create loudspeakers for their interests.
In reality, it all began with the then Madrid leader Esperanza Aguirre, when she was the president of the Community of the capital of the Kingdom, around the turn of the century. Many of those who would end up forming part of the founding group of Vox sheltered under her generous cloak, starting with Abascal, those who considered themselves liberals despite their dependence on the public budget.
In those years, while he nurtured his dreams of succeeding Mariano Rajoy as head of the PP, Aguirre applied in his Community the program of unfair tax competition with the rest of the territories, with progressive tax reductions. Aguirre articulated in Spain the tax revolt of the global elites, a phenomenon germinated in the US With his speech and with the protection and encouragement of his local preachers. And to a large extent taking as a model the PP of José María Aznar of the legislature of the absolute majority, the authentic, the original.
That was one of the lines of combat with which Aguirre fought the PP, which was then in government. The main one, in fact. In those days, the great enemy of that liberal group of the Madrid PP was his fellow party Cristóbal Montoro, Minister of Finance and responsible for the most drastic tax increases in democracy as a result of the fiscal bankruptcy of the State due to the crisis of the housing bubble. For the Aguirristas, and for a good part of the capital's elites, Montoro became the most reviled politician, a kind of communist disguised as a conservative.
The founding fathers of Vox rallied against this fiscal policy, and to a large extent also those of Albert Rivera's Ciudadanos. The deployment of Ciudadanos in the whole of Spain and the founding of Vox were incubated around the same dates. The difference between the two formations, in the field of their economic proposals, was that the first was located within the margins of the mainstream, with names like Luis Garicano (London School of Economics (LSE) and the world of schools business) and Toni Roldán (also from the LSE and a disciple of the former), close to the financial world; while the latter flirted with anarcho-capitalism and the dismantling of the welfare state at the hands of Rubén Manso, (former Bank of Spain inspector and military) and Victor González Coello of Portugal, (linked in the past with Goldman Sachs).
The now ousted Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, was his visible face in the business world, as he was part of a saga with a long monarchical career, first and Francoist later, with his father Carlos, former president of Iberia, Mercedes Benz and the Círculo de Empresarios de Madrid and commissioner of the Spain Brand with the Government of Rajoy, as the greatest exponent. A direct link, but never explicit, to create a weight for the PP to tilt it further to the right.
Ivan was the contact with the radical puppies of those elites most critical of Rajoy's politics, Jacobo González-Robatto style, son of a financial executive and former president of Pescanova. First they left the PP and jumped to the Ciudadanos party, which they cheered on above all in the world of cities, with Madrid in the lead. When, after the April 2019 elections, Rivera did not live up to his expectations, they changed horses and in November they paraded behind Abascal's banners.
Vox went from being at 1.5 million Citizens to exceeding it by more than two. A historic turn in just over six months. The march of the new layers towards the extreme right dictated a critical financial drought for Ciudadanos and abundance for Vox.
But of course, the phalanxes of the extreme right are not those of the middle classes of the big cities. And in the last elections, the political-social experiment of using the most conservative sectors to support the ultra-liberal economic program desired by some aristocrats of money already showed its limits. And the troops rose up.
At the same time, those who with their resources promoted Vox now seem to have understood, in view of July 23, that the idea was not a good one. Not only does it not ensure victory; further activates the other side. And it also revives the always thorny Catalan issue, to which Abascal referred in civil war terms at the end of the campaign, despite the messages that had been sent to him not to get into that swamp. And with the bank tax of the Italian Giorgia Meloni on the horizon. Perhaps, more than before the decline of a sector, we are witnessing that of Vox as a whole.
