"It's the end of the road." This is how the Vox spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, has expressed the slam of the possible aspirations of his former partner in the leadership of the Macarena Olona parliamentary group to return to the political front line hand in hand with the party.
And it has done so just after the former Vox militant denounced in interviews and social networks that the formation is "exclusive", it lacks internal democracy, that she was the victim of a "lynching" and that someone "inside saw her illness as an opportunity to take her out of the game".
Espinosa de los Monteros, in statements to journalists in Congress, has justified the decision in the "enormous pain" that is being caused through Olona "to people we are fond of" and the damage that is being done to the project. "In view of what is being published and how it is being used by all those who want to harm a project like Vox's (...), in view of the damage that is being done through it, This is definitely the end of the road," the spokesman concluded.
Espinosa has wished Olona "the best in politics" and has assured that they will always be at his disposal for "any personal matter". "I say it with enormous pain and enormous affection simultaneously," concluded Espinosa, who did not want to answer any more questions from journalists.
Olona, who announced that he was leaving political activity at the end of July due to a thyroid disease, had given unequivocal signals in recent days and hours about his willingness to return to politics hand in hand with his previous party, to the point that A few hours before Espinosa's words, he had posted a message on his Twitter account in which he shared an interview with the ABC newspaper, in which he assured that Vox is his "family" and called for party unity against those who want sow their division "even if they are inside".
"I hope that some answers (in the interview) will answer your questions. I have one: who saw my illness as an opportunity to get me out of the game? In the answer is the origin of the intoxication that we are seeing these days. Unity. Spain, first," Olona said in another tweet.
In the interview with ABC, Olona maintains that since last week he made public on the social network that he would request a meeting with the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, to see if they could "walk" together again "through Andalusia and Spain" it is victim of a "lynching" to add that "the meat grinding machine" was activated.
In another message on social networks, Olona assured that the Vox crisis may be caused from within the formation. "I ask the entire Vox family, which is my family, not to let those who want to sow division win, even if they are inside," she warned.
And in the interview, Olona warns that "some are making a lot of mistakes breaking the unity that characterized Vox against other political formations." "I know where the stab is coming from," he affirms and says he does not understand that "personal egos come before the purpose of the project."
He insists that a party "cannot be exclusive to be an alternative", although he recognizes that the most complicated position of a party is that of general secretary, a position that Javier Ortega Smith has in Vox. He assures that he is not arm wrestling and that he does not conceive that the result of the meeting that he has asked Abascal "is not to walk together" as he understands that there are no reasons not to "continue hand in hand."
He points out that if he finally decides to return it would be in such a way that Andalusia does not feel betrayed and assures that his course is "fixed" and that he already has "an absolutely made decision", which does not involve leading a new project with people who left Vox. "I represent Vox," she says, adding that her former colleagues in Congress see her "as a value within Vox that they hope can be incorporated back into what they continue to see as a family."
Last Sunday, Abascal himself said in Barcelona that in his party they are waiting for Olona to decide whether to maintain his decision to leave politics or resume this activity and rejoin the formation and congratulated himself on "the rapid recovery" of Olona. "A little over a month and a half ago - Abascal recalled - Olona informed us that he could not fulfill his commitments to the Andalusians for health reasons, and that he had decided to leave politics and go to the State Bar" for which he celebrated the improvement of Olona's health.
This has been seen as the far-right leader questioning the illness of his parliamentary spokesman. "Santi is denying my illness?" Olona answers when asked about the question after acknowledging that she leaves him "very worried" about the question since "I have already heard this analysis these days." "I would like her to say it openly," adds Olona, who anticipates that she would ask him at the meeting she requested.
Olona announced on July 29, 2022 her withdrawal from politics and public life "for medical reasons" and reappeared in August as a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago. On Friday, after a university event in Granada, Olona announced that she will request a meeting with Abascal to ask him if they "walk together" in defense of a "better future" for Andalusia and the rest of Spain.
