The national spokesperson for Vox, José Antonio Fúster, has reacted with a very harsh tone to the manifesto promoted by former leaders and critical voices of the party who are asking for an extraordinary congress to review the internal structure of the formation. In an interview on Las mañanas de RNE, Fúster responded directly to Iván Espinosa de los Monteros and to other names linked to that initiative, making it clear that the leadership rejects that internal offensive.
The most forceful phrase of his intervention was directed at the former senior Vox official Espinosa de los Monteros. Fúster asked him to disassociate himself from the party and sent him this message: “Mind your own business. I don't know, leave us in peace.” Along the same lines, he extended his reproach to the rest of the critics, among them Javier Ortega Smith, José Ángel Antelo or Víctor Sánchez del Real, and went so far as to say that they should “stick their ego where it fits”.
The origin of the clash is in the statement released by former members of Vox's leadership, in which they demand to convene a party congress to review its internal organization. Asked about that proposal, Fúster responded with irony: “Of course. I want to have a million friends”. With that phrase, he tried to ridicule an initiative that proposes opening a debate on the party's leadership and functioning.
Fúster accused of political opportunism the signatories of the manifesto. Fúster regretted that “there has not been a single internal dissent when they were in command” and reproached them for then being “delighted with life” while holding positions in "Bambú", in allusion to the party headquarters. According to his approach, those criticisms do not arise from a new ideological debate, but from those who previously formed part of the leadership core and now question what they supported.
In the interview, he also addressed the case of Javier Ortega Smith and the recent information about the party. Regarding the former, he maintained that he “self-expelled” by “failing to comply with an order from the National Executive Committee,” and recalled that it was Ortega Smith himself, when he was secretary general, who established that disobeying the Committee was a “very serious offense and expulsion.” Furthermore, he denied two recent accusations against Vox: on the one hand, he said he doubted “infinitely” that the party uses its members' data to sell courses; on the other hand, he rejected the statements attributed to Juan García Gallardo about a supposed “bunkerized” structure and alleged economic irregularities, assuring that they were not true.
