By Giuseppe De Santis
On the 23rd of July, Spanish voters will go to the polls to elect new members of the parliament. According to recent polls, the anti-immigration VOX Party will have a good chance to rule together with the right-wing Popular Party.
A lot has been said about VOX, but what is its political program? Here, you can see a lot of common sense policies
Retaking sovereignty from the EU
VOX claims the primacy of national law and the need for member states to regain sovereignty. It proposes to reform the treaties to “give back the protagonism to member states, against the bureaucracy of the European Commission, which nobody chooses”.
Defeating ‘climate religion’
VOX believes that “The so-called ecological transitions consist of transferring huge amounts of money from the middle and working classes to the elites pushing the climate agenda”, adding that human interest should prevail over any attempt to promote the environment’s protection “against the radical environmentalism of elite-imposed agendas” and the “climate religion” imposed by the West.
“Spain must dissociate itself from any international agreement or legislation that blames our producers for environmental problems”, they propose, vouching to “stop the sudden closure of industrial and energy plants caused by the impositions of the new climate religion”.
Enhancing rural Spain
Arguing that Spain’s rural lifestyle is the target of “progressive elites” and stigmatised by the “globalist agenda”, they seek to protect the agrifood industry, repopulate rural areas and enhance public services, ensure the availability of water in all rural areas, and defend farmers from the “criminalisation of irrigation”, among other things.
Slashing taxes, ministries, and parliaments
VOX also proposes ambitious tax cuts across sectors of society, which would be compensated by cutting political ‘waste’ spending. “It is necessary to dismantle the autonomous [regions] system, put an end to administrative duplicities, reduce the number of ministries, departments, members of parliament, and parliaments”, they say.
Dismantling the autonomous regions system
“Forty years of regionalism have left us with a political community divided into 17 kingdoms of taifas [11th century Muslim kingdoms in Spanish terrority]”, the programme reads.
Arguing that current regions try to “artificially homogenise territories”, they propose “limiting as much as possible the legislative capacity of the autonomous regions” by slashing the decentralised competencies on Education, Health, Security and Justice and abolishing regional public media and police.
Preserving national identity and unity
VOX proposes the “illegalisation of parties, associations or NGOs that pursue the destruction of the territorial unity of the nation and its sovereignty”, meaning Catalan and Basque pro-independence organisations, while also seeking to protect with the “maximum judicial protection” Spain’s crown, flag, anthem, and other symbols.
Another measure proposed is the derogation of the Democratic Memory Law, which ensures that the crimes during Franco’s dictatorship are unveiled and recognised by the Spanish state, arguing that it ”generates division”.
Overall, they want to ”disseminate and protect national identity and Spain’s contribution to civilisation and universal history, with special attention to the deeds and feats of our national heroes within and beyond our borders”. VOX also holds territorial claims on “occupied” Gibraltar.
Battling ‘indoctrination’ in classrooms
To fight “ideological indoctrination” of Spain’s education system, VOX also proposes to “remove from the classrooms any person or association that offers affective-sexual content without parental knowledge and acceptance”. The far-right party refers, among others, to any type of sexual education, including LGBT+ diversity and rights and gender equality promotion.
The programme also includes proposals to ensure the use of Spanish in education, as opposed to current systems that use regional languages such as Catalan and Basque.
VOX also seeks to “rescue the universities from all totalitarian ideological impositions and their cancel culture”.
Less ‘gender ideology’, more family
VOX also proposes the immediate substitution of the Gender Violence Law, which “enshrines the penal asymmetry and inequality between man and women and undermines the basic pillars of the rule of law, for a Law of Inter-familial Violence, as well as the Ministry of Equality.
At the same time, they also propose to derogate any legislation establishing positive discrimination and quotas, as well as subventions to “ideological organisations”. Instead, they give emphasis on enhancing families’ rights and fiscal benefits and the creation of a Law for the Protection of the Family and a Ministry of the Family.
Xenophobia
“The advance of globalism threatens the preservation of the cultural identity of Western nations”, the programme reads. In that sense, VOX would expel all ‘illegal’ migrants and those ‘legal’ migrants charged with criminal offences and would also illegalise all fundamentalist mosques in Spain and the rest of Europe.
Readers will notice that, apart from the EU and local government, many parts of VOX’s political programme are quite similar to the British Democrats’ policies, and this is not a coincidence given that both parties have policies based on common sense. The main difference is that with the Spanish Proportional Representation voting system, those policies will help VOX join the next government coalition.
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Good article. The EU have long promoted ‘regionalism’ in member countries and will also have supported independence factions within those countries – in this way they seek to highlight ‘difference’ and frustrate any sense of brotherhood amongst compatriots , setting them against one another in a scramble for ‘special interest’ EU funding.