Jorge Martín Frías is the director of Fundación Disenso, the think-tank of the VOX Party in Spain. The co-author of the 2020 book, La hora de España: una afirmación liberal-conservadora (Spain’s Hour: a Liberal-Conservative Affirmation), he has worked as a political consultant and advisor to numerous organizations. He was previously the head of training at the FAES think-tank. He holds a degree in philosophy from the Complutense University in Madrid and a master’s degree in political and institutional communications from Ortega y Gasset University Institute.
What role does Fundación Disenso play in the debate of ideas that is taking place in Europe?
I believe we play a crucial role in this discussion. Western civilization finds itself in a crisis—and so do the principles and ideas that serve as the cornerstone of our way of life. Though this crisis is far from simple to understand, it does have very clear roots: cultural Marxism—and the transformation of our universities into training centers for political agitation, social engineering, and cancel culture.
This kind of rot is present in almost all universities, and that fact gives conservative think-tanks far more work to do—and greater responsibility—than they have had in earlier decades. Our work used to consist of studying draft bills, recommending tax reforms, and minor policy advice. Today, however, our work needs to go beyond this because our most fundamental Western principles—and the common man—are under attack.
What is the mission of Fundación Disenso?
To understand this, it’s necessary to recognize the nature our current social and political realities. The great Isaiah Berlin, paraphrasing Heinrich Heine, said that even the simplest philosophical concepts, conceived in the calm of a professor’s office, can destroy an entire civilization. What this means is that we cannot ignore the breeding grounds of these toxic ideas—i.e., the universities and the mass media. Thus, focusing on these areas—education and media—is part of our central mission.
Second, we recognize that, too often, even non-progressive political forces have sought power and have ended up implementing policies within the ideological boundaries created by progressivism. This has led to the dominance of ideas that are harmful both to our political community and to individuals. As a result, we face an all-out culture war. Therefore, we must end the cultural and political dictatorship of the Left. That is our primary mission.
In concrete terms, we defend the right of all people to dissent from the political correctness that has dissolved public debate, and which has undermined our most fundamental rights—and even the prosperity of our nations. This has had an impact on the development of public policies and sound political projects. Politics has thus become increasingly geared towards invading privacy, indoctrinating rather than educating, weakening the political community (the nation), and legislating agendas that pervert our core values. In Spain, for example, fugitives from justice, embezzlers of public funds, and street terrorists are all granted amnesty—while ordinary citizens are fined for improper parking or for not paying their taxes on time.
We are working to forge a new social and cultural consensus around the idea of freedom, the sovereignty of nations, and the affirmation of Spain as a nation-state. These goals are shared by many of our allies, both within and outside of Spain, precisely because all nations face similar threats: the restriction of our freedoms, the dissolution of our identity, the undermining of the nation-state, and the elimination of the middle- and working-class.
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The Iberosphere is an area of keen interest for Fundación Disenso. Why is it important for Europe to pay attention to other Spanish-speaking regions of the world?
More than 700 million people share a cultural, historical, and linguistic legacy with Spain and Portugal. This is the Iberosphere, a massive area of influence. Of course, it also has benefitted from the influence of other European nations, like Italy (in Argentina) or Germany (in Chile). So for Europe to turn its back on this region would be a fundamental mistake. We not only share the same Western civilization; what happens in the Iberosphere also affects the democracy, identity, and security of Europe—its very way of life.
It’s worth noting that right after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Fidel Castro and the current Brazilian president, Luiz Lula Da Silva, created the São Paulo Forum, an international organization primarily made up of communist and socialist parties. Since its founding, this organization has staunchly supported the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan dictatorships. And, through their tacit agreements with the drug cartels, they have managed to destabilize many democratic regimes in the Latin American region.
The Forum has modern counterparts in the Puebla Group (founded in 2019), along with its more Anglo-American face, the Progressive International (founded in 2020), and its pan-European ally, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). The Puebla Group is made up of convicted left-wing politicians like Rafael Correa of Ecuador, coup leader (and former drug industry spokesman) Evo Morales of Bolivia, the corrupt Ernesto Samper in Colombia, and Nicolás Maduro’s primary ally in Spain, former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, just to name a few.
Whoever believes Europe is entirely detached from such geographically distant left-wing groups is sorely mistaken. First of all, they all have close ties to Russia, Iran, and China. Second, their loyalties are suspect: consider their public statements in support of Russia when it invaded Ukraine, as well as their silence after the recent brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas against civilians in Israel.
It is clear that these groups seek to influence events on this side of the Atlantic. We saw it in Spain with the creation of the far-left Podemos party, made up of the radical Left and communists who have done nothing to hide their admiration for Hugo Chávez. Allegedly, various groups within the São Paulo Forum and Puebla Group funded the left-wing populist Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, donating a million euros according to journalistic investigations.
Their ideological agenda also includes preaching all of the dogmas contained in the ‘2030 Agenda’ adopted by UN member States in 2015—which includes Critical Race Theory. They are basically advocating for and mainstreaming the teachings of the Frankfurt School—what is more commonly known as ‘cultural Marxism.’
It is against this complex and challenging backdrop that Disenso created the Madrid Forum in 2020. This organization denounces all of the various interventions and machinations of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group. The Madrid Forum is building an alternative network around the values of liberty, the rule of law, prosperity, and the defense of national sovereignty. Among the signatories of its founding document—the ‘Madrid Charter’—are government leaders like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and President Javier Milei of Argentina, as well as more than 200 parliamentarians from over 30 nations. There is much work to be done—but, every step of the way, we are winning the battles that will eventually lead us to victory.
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What are your thoughts about the results of this year’s Spanish general election?
We’ve taken a very dim view. The PP (Popular Party) and its preferred pollster and communications firm, GAD3, told Spanish voters that the election was basically ‘in the bag.’ At one point, they even suggested that they were close to having an absolute majority. Such lies—combined with the demonization of VOX, led by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the PP—brought terrible electoral consequences.
History is repeating itself. We now have a PSOE government with communist ministers essentially perpetrating a coup: in exchange for a few votes, they passed the Catalan amnesty law, which erases the crimes of domestic terrorists, public-sector thieves, and other fugitives from justice. With this law, the PSOE and the Catalan separatists are engaging in ‘lawfare’—essentially the misuse of the law to delegitimize opponents—while they orchestrate a regime change in the background. This is a critical political situation. But instead of opposing such coup attempts—against the nation, the state, and the people—the PP is putting all its efforts into trying to make VOX disappear. It does frighten me—and should frighten all Spaniards—to think what would happen if VOX did not exist at all.
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What does it mean to you to be a conservative?
To paraphrase Michael Oakeshott: more than anything else, being conservative is an attitude. It means to prefer the familiar instead of the unknown, and to prefer the real instead of the merely possible. It means defending and sharing what we love. Being conservative means having a sense of grandeur, the ability to still be amazed by beauty—and the ability to laugh at our own imperfections. It also means maintaining a healthy distrust of any utopia preached by the ‘priests’ of the modern world’s organized mass-market happiness.
This interview appears in the Winter 2024 edition of The European Conservative, Number 29:42-44.
