Vox (Spanish: [boks]; Latin for 'voice'; often stylized in all caps) is a national conservative political party in Spain. Founded in 2013, it is led by party president Santiago Abascal, and vice president and secretary-general Ignacio Garriga. Vox has been described as far-right or radical right. The party entered the Spanish parliament for the first time after winning seats in the April 2019 general election. Later that year, it received 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, winning 52 seats and becoming the third-largest party in the Congress of Deputies. Its public support reached its peak within the next few years, according to the results of subsequent regional elections and opinion polling, but in the 2023 Spanish general election showed worse results: a loss of 19 seats in parliament (albeit remaining the third-largest political party in Spain with roughly 3 million votes). In the European Parliament, the six deputies of Vox are members of Patriots for Europe after a stint in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
History
Early years
Origins (2013–2014)
Vox was founded on 17 December 2013, and publicly launched at a press conference in Madrid on 16 January 2014, as a split from the People's Party (PP). This schism was interpreted as an offshoot of "neoconservative" or "social conservative" PP party members. The party platform called for the rewriting of the Spanish constitution so as to curb regional autonomy and abolish regional parliaments. Several founding members of the party (for example, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, José Antonio Ortega Lara, and Santiago Abascal) had been members of the platform "reconversion.es", which had issued a manifesto in 2012 calling for a recentralization of the State. Vidal-Quadras was proclaimed as the first chairman in March 2014. Their initial funding, totalling nearly 972,000 euros, came in the form of individual donations from supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and of People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), thanks to their "personal relationship" with Vidal-Quadras, who had supported the NCRI during his stint in the EU Parliament. There is no evidence that Vox has broken Spanish or EU funding rules accepting these donations. The 2014 European elections marked the first time the newly formed Vox fielded a candidate, with Vidal-Quadras running under its banner, though he narrowly failed to retain his seat in the European Parliament. Vidal Quadras later left the party due to both the political failure at the European election and his inability to impose his stances in the party. He would argue in 2018 that the party shifted from a "liberal conservative, Europeanist, and reformist" proposal (represented by himself), to a "nationalist, revisionist, Eurosceptic and confessional" one.
Abascal's early leadership (2014–2017) In September 2014, the party elected Santiago Abascal, one of the founders, as its president, and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, also a founder, as General Secretary. Eleven members of the National Executive Committee were also elected. The party took part in the 2015 and 2016 general elections, scoring 0.23% and 0.20% of the votes respectively. Amidst the Spanish constitutional crisis precipitated by the Catalan referendum, Vox opted to not participate in the Catalan regional elections of 2017. After the Catalan declaration of independence, the party sued the Parliament of Catalonia and several independentist politicians. Its membership grew by 20% in the span of forty days immediately following this action.
Electoral breakthrough
Entrance into institutions (2018–2019) On 10 September 2018, Vox enlisted Juan Antonio Morales (an independent legislator in the regional parliament of Extremadura who had dropped out of the PP parliamentary group) as a party member. On 2 December 2018, they won 12 parliamentary seats in the Andalusian regional election, entering a regional parliament for the first time. It supported the coalition regional government by Ciudadanos and the Popular Party. With this result, Vox obtained a first seat in the Senate, which was taken by Francisco José Alcaraz. The party obtained 10.26% of votes in the April 2019 general election, electing 24 Deputies and entering the Congress of Deputies for the first time. Later, the party entered the European Parliament for the first time with 6.2% of the votes and three Eurodeputies, which after Brexit became four. After the election, the party joined the European Conservatives and Reformists group and the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, having declined the invitation to join the Identity and Democracy group (which included such far-right parties as National Rally, League, and Alternative for Germany). In the second general election of the year in November, Vox came third and increased its number of deputies from 24 to 52. It was the most-voted party in the Region of Murcia and the autonomous city of Ceuta.
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