Vox management has provisionally suspended both the deputy spokesperson of the municipal group in Madrid, Carla Toscano, and councilor Ignacio Ansaldo from militancy. Two decisions that come days after the far-right party expelled Javier Ortega Smith, still leader of the party in the City Council.
The general secretary of Vox, headed by Ignacio Garriga, has sent a statement to the Madrid City Council, as it did last Thursday with respect to Ortega Smith. In the letter they communicate the opening of an expulsion file from the party in a precautionary situation, both for Toscano and Ansaldo, according to Europa Press from municipal sources.
As Ortega Smith himself detailed this Monday in a hectic press conference, it so happens that Ansaldo holds Vox membership card 001 as a founding partner, while his (which he has shown to the media) is 006. The still deputy announced last Friday that he will fight within the political party as far as he has to go, including ordinary justice, because his “honorability is not for sale,” to accuse the party led by Santiago Abascal of invent “lies” as “excuses” to try to get him fired.
Ortega has reaffirmed himself this Monday as “as spokesperson” for Vox and has assured that there is neither a majority to replace him within the municipal group nor internal division, although according to Europa Press details he has the support of both Toscano and Ansaldo against Arantxa Cabello, designated by the party leadership as spokesperson for the group against Ortega, and Fernando Martínez Vidal.
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, clarified days ago that only the municipal group can remove Javier Ortega Smith as spokesperson, neither the party nor the City Council, to call into question the “monumental mess” that Vox has gotten itself into. He also raised the possible “inefficiency” of the expulsions as they are precautionary. This Monday, however, he dropped that the president of the plenary session Borja Fanjul will issue a resolution and that “if the Vox municipal group itself does not make the decision, it seems difficult for Ortega Smith not to be the spokesperson for Vox in the City Council tomorrow.” With three of the five councilors of the extreme right in Cibeles suspended from militancy, the mess is now taking the form of an organic crisis.
