Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy has been experienced by the main far-right party in Spain, Vox, as a victory of its own. For the rest, September has been a month marked by international events in which both Vox officials and Hazte Oír and its international branch, CitizenGo, have participated in Europe and the world.
Updates in the National Landscape One of the milestones for the extreme right in Spain in September was the demonstration called in Barcelona against the use of the Catalan language in schools. The demonstration, called by the Escuela de Todos platform, was supported by Vox, La Falange or España 2000, among other far-right parties. https://twitter.com/Santi_ABASCAL/status/1571549585104838664 https://twitter.com/VOX_Congreso/status/1572935013351424001 https://twitter.com/lafalange/status/1571565535145631746 https://twitter.com/Espana_2000/status/1574695063745093632
Support for the demands for a salary increase for the police forces has been another of the national issues that Vox has influenced, which has participated in the demonstration called on September 24 by the main police unions. https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1573678005444034561 https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1573718086666145794
From Vox they have also influenced the ‘water war’, a conflict between different Spanish regions derived from the transfer of water from the Tagus River to the Segura River, an issue that has traditionally been used as a battle horse by parties such as Vox and the Popular Party for a long time. decades. On September 30, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, spokesperson for Vox in Congress, participated in the conference Agriculture and water in the Levant, present and future, in Murcia. https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1575825694780628992 https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1575807993534365696 https://twitter.com/EspanaDecide/status/1575856461535907841 https://eventos.laverdad.es/jornada-agricultura-agua/
Water is one of the issues on which Vox wants to launch national consultations. To do this, at the end of August they created a new Twitter account, Spain Decide, which they want to promote at the party’s anniversary party in October. https://twitter.com/EspanaDecide
Regarding new extreme right-wing groups at the national level, a report by the Stop Fascismos Málaga collective links neo-Nazi groups in this province with companies that illegally evict squatters, specifically with the company Exit Okupas, which has accumulated several legal complaints for threats and attacks during illegal evictions of vulnerable people. In that company, according to this report, there are members of the Bokeron Front, such as Juan José Bermúdez Rodríguez, known as ‘Juan el Gordo’, who was also number one on the electoral lists of the neo-Nazi Alianza Nacional party in the municipal elections of Malaga , and has also been a member of Málaga 1487 and is currently a member of Hace Nation. Previously, in other cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, ​​the links of illegal eviction companies with extreme right groups have been shown, mainly the Desokupa company, the best known, which has among its workers members of the Bulgarian extreme right organization Orthodox Alba. https://stopfascismomlg.wordpress.com/2022/09/01/quien-hay-detras-de-la-empresa-de-desokupacion-exit-okupas-en-malaga/ https://www.elsaltodiario.com/hemeroteca-diagonal/paramilitares-y-extrema-derecha-integran-una-empresa-que-ejecuta-desalojos-extrajudiciales
At the judicial level, the highlight in September was the judgment of the Provincial Court of Valladolid, which ruled that calling the Association of Christian Lawyers a “troglodyte”, “extreme right” and “fundamentalist” organization is legal. The sentence acquits the actor Guillermo Toledo, who had been accused of libel and slander by this association of lawyers as a result of calling them this way after being acquitted of another alleged crime of offense against religious sentiments of which he was accused by the same association. The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers is an organization that, since it became known in 2008, has used the courts as a battlefield against feminist and LGBT organizations and activists. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/libertad-expresion/audiencia-provincial-valladolid-ampara-troglodita-fundamentalista-extrema-derecha-asociacion-abogados-cristianos-willy-toledo
Transnational Activities & Group Interactions The Polish ultra-religious legal organization opens a branch in Spain, with headquarters in Murcia. Senior officials from Vox attended the event. The relationship between the Polish organization and Vox already jumped into the media in May, when the Spanish far-right party launched a bill in Murcia to ban LGBT flags in administration headquarters. The Spanish branch of Ordo Iuris is directed by Francisco Meroño Gil, who is also an advisor to Vox in the Parliament of Murcia. https://www.murcia.com/nacional/noticias/2022/05/14-ordo-iuris-defiende-la-neutralidad-ideologica-de-la-administracion.asp https://www.elespanol.com/espana/murcia/20220525/murcia-propuesta-vox-prohibir-lgtbi-edificios-publicos/675182710_0.html https://www.murcia.com/nacional/noticias/2022/09/17-gran-expectacion-en-la-presentacion-de-ordo-iuris-en-madrid.asp
Italy has marked the international relations of Vox in September, especially since the electoral victory of Giorgia Meloni. Meloni, whom Vox considers an ally, has once again made a splash after her victory for the speech she gave during the Vox rally for the Andalusian elections in June in which she defended the traditional family and charged against LGBT groups, the Islamic community. https://www.eldiario.es/politica/triunfo-meloni-italia-pilla-vox-plena-crisis-olona_1_9570169.html https://www.huffingtonpost.es/entry/en-vox-se-rifan-a-giorgia-meloni_es_6331b9a6e4b01804e09077e7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGrmRKD_fY&ab_channel=ElMundo https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1570341045405372421 https://twitter.com/Santi_ABASCAL/status/1574161586062823426 https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1574361659593789442 https://twitter.com/GiorgiaMeloni/status/1575389647458521088
From smaller parties of the Spanish extreme right, such as La Falange, they have expressed their rejection of the new Italian president, whom they accuse of “promising respect” to organizations such as the European Union and NATO. https://twitter.com/NorbertoPico/status/1575180881840349184 https://twitter.com/lafalange/status/1574798856402903045
From Vox they have also affectionately congratulated the Swedish far-right party Sweden Democrats for their second place in the elections. Vox MEP Hermann Tertsch has identified the Swedish party as “brother” to Vox. https://twitter.com/Santi_ABASCAL/status/1569252536011333633 https://twitter.com/hermanntertsch/status/1569217327446609921
At the end of September, it was a senior official from Vox, Jorge Buxadé, a European deputy, who traveled to Italy to participate in the Conference “Italian Conservatism: Europe, Identity, Freedom” and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros traveled to the United States to participate in a conference promoted by the Heritage Foundation. https://europeanconservative.com/articles/the-european-conservative/italian-conservatism-event/ https://twitter.com/ivanedlm/status/1568570358864691200
Transnational Developments on Discourse in Mainstream Media Beyond Europe, the organization Hazte Oír continues to create networks. According to The Bureau Investigates, the Spanish ultra-Catholic organization and its international branch, CitizenGo, have launched a campaign against abortion and LGBT rights in Kenya. The publication details that the organization has received economic funds from the Russian oligarch Alexey Komov. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-09-25/unholy-alliance-the-far-right-religious-network-attacking-reproductive-and-lgbtq-rights
Ignacio Ursuaga, founder of Hazte Oír and CitizenGo, has also traveled to Mexico for the World Congress of Families, organized by Mexican ultra-Catholic organizations and by CitizenGo. https://wcfmexico.org/speakers/
For its part, CitizenGo, its international branch, has launched a campaign to collect signatures in Italy, supported by the Spanish far-right party La Falange, for the Italian government to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. https://citizengo.org/it/208895-questo-appello-chiede-alla-santa-sede-di-continuare-ricerca-assidua-pace-evidenziando-il-suo https://twitter.com/lafalange/status/1565269277099294725
In the European Parliament, Vox’s main interventions have been aimed at demanding the “cessation of subsidies to NGOs that collaborate with human trafficking”, criticizing ecological policies and criticizing policies aimed at minimally regulating the legal minimum wages of the States. Members, again attacking migration as the cause of poor working conditions. https://twitter.com/VOX_Europa_/status/1569279126883688448 https://twitter.com/VOX_Europa_/status/1569634160649682946 https://twitter.com/VOX_Europa_/status/1569655601352810496 https://twitter.com/vox_es/status/1571024768786403329