The national conservative VOX was founded in 2013 and entered into the Spanish parliament for the first time in 2019. Now the third largest party, VOX is growing rapidly as more and more voters become disillusioned with the two establishment parties that have been dominating the country’s political scene for decades. VOX is part of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, the third largest bloc in the EU Parliament, and its leader, Santiago Abascal, was elected president of the Patriots.eu political party. Last week, VOX hosted a major Patriot summit in Madrid, where Abascal shared the stage with other prominent leaders of the group, including Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini, and Geert Wilders. Following the event, we sat down with José Antonio Fúster, the national spokesman for VOX and the President of VOX Madrid, to discuss his party’s vision and the future of Europe’s emerging national conservative movement.
VOX recently became the biggest party among Spanish voters between 18 and 34, polling far above both establishment blocs. Why is VOX so popular among the youth?
For 45 years, the socialist PSOE and the center-right Partido Popular (PP) consistently betrayed the Spanish people. And betraying your citizens in the past didn’t mean much for these parties, as they could always mobilize voters against each other. But now, they have both betrayed the younger generation, who feel their future has been taken from them. They don’t have any possibilities, no chance to buy a home, for example. Here in Madrid, it’s near impossible to start a family now. And instead of confronting this reality and trying to offer solutions, the leftists are spending time challenging what a man or woman is. Young people want nothing to do with that. It’s like that old Danish tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Who do you need to tell the emperor that he’s naked? A child. Young people are able to see a naked man and call him what he is. We, the older generation, are too much like the frogs in boiling water, we don’t know we are dying. The young people are capable of seeing and calling out the truth, and that’s why they vote VOX.
These establishment parties you mentioned also sit in the two ruling groups in Brussels, so Spain is comparable to the EU in this sense. The Patriots’ joint resolution from the summit said the EU was “stuck in the past.” What do they mean by this?
It means they are stuck in the old politics. The parties within the EPP [European People’s Party] and S&D [Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats] play this same old ‘game of thrones’ they’ve done for decades. And by now, it’s clear they are two sides of the same coin. One politician from PP here in Spain recently said the link between the two parties is “indestructible.” The only way you can say something like this is if you live in the past. In the future, when you’re facing all these challenges, all these terrible things that happen in the world, when you have to defend your borders and even the frontiers of Europe, you cannot do that hand in hand with the socialists. This doesn’t mean the past is always worse, of course. There are valuable lessons in the past and we have to remember them. But we know perfectly well what the founders of the European Union wanted for Europe. And we stand with those principles, because the pillar of that foundation was national sovereignty.
VOX was also the only party that switched from the ECR to the Patriots. On one hand, it’s the larger group, the third biggest in the EU Parliament. On the other hand, the Patriots are still under cordon sanitaire, while the ECR isn’t anymore. How did this switch play out for you?
The better question is what we can do together. VOX has been working hard to unite as many political parties in Europe as we can. Five years ago, VOX had only three MEPs in Brussels. Just three—and we were still capable of being the glue that held these very different parties of the old ECR together. Now we have a new challenge: we need to create the biggest group in the entire Parliament. How can we do it? From inside the ECR? No. We could do it by creating a new group, the Patriots, and inviting others to join or cooperate. The other day, Spanish public TV put it very accurately when they divided the screen between the EPP, the S&D, and the Renew on one side, and the Patriots, ECR, and ESN on the other. They see the reality that these three right-wing groups can act like a strong, united opposition. The next goal is to get some people from the EPP to join our side. And I believe we can do it.
More and more people see that the cordon sanitaire is inherently undemocratic. If you look at polls, even leftist voters are rejecting it as an institution in countries like Germany or Belgium. Yet, Brussels still insists on the exclusion of the third-largest force. How can you break free of it eventually?
The cordon sanitaire was successful in the past five years, as in we were growing, but not as fast as we should have. But the only reason the firewall succeeded was that freedom of expression was limited in newspapers and on social media. But now something has changed. This is truly an exciting moment to be alive. President Trump has convinced people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and all the big tech companies in the United States that freedom of speech has to be restored. Not granted, but restored, because we used to have it in the past. It was valued and cherished 50 years ago when the EU was founded, and gradually taken away later. But now we can break all these barriers of the cordon sanitaire, because we now start to have our old freedoms of thought and expression back. It’s a long trip, but with people like Elon Musk, I not only think it’s possible, but it’s going to happen sooner than you’d think.
Marine Le Pen just said that the Patriots are in the best position in Europe to talk to Trump. That’s something that several of Trump’s closest advisors said as well, regarding the Patriots as the natural allies of the administration in the EU. What doors does that relationship open for you?
Did you see who was sitting in the front row at this summit? It was Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, along with one of his senior advisors, Mike Gonzales. They are here in Madrid, at a VOX meeting, sitting next to all the Patriot leaders. They were also at our meeting and dinner yesterday, where Roberts delivered an incredible speech. It’s the first time in my life—and I’m getting old—that the Heritage Foundation has selected an ally. And that ally is the Patriots. Of course, they will work with other political parties too, but they are convinced that we are the number one force aligned with their values in Europe today. For me, it’s like seeing a flying pink elephant. It’s a dream come true. Six years ago, we in VOX were thinking about how we could get just one MP. And yesterday, I was at a dinner at the Casino de Madrid and enjoying a speech from the president of the Heritage Foundation. I almost had to pinch myself because it was so unbelievable. If we have achieved this in six years, the future will be incredible. And we have, of course, the Trump administration at our side. We are not below him in any way, nor above. He’s our brother-in-arms, and that’s perfect.
Matteo Salvini mentioned the USAID scandal that was recently blown open by the Trump administration. Is Spain also affected by the interference of these leftist NGOs?
If you kick a lamp post in Spain, you’ll have four NGOs falling down that have been taking money from us and from overseas to do evil things to the Spanish people. Of course we’re also affected. But yes, Salvini knows perfectly well what he’s talking about, because he was an interior minister in Italy. He had all the information the interior ministry gathered, so he knows exactly what these NGOs have done in Italy. Spain is probably even worse, because we are the true southern border of Europe. We have hundreds of NGOs working to get hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the country. Just in Madrid last year, public hospitals treated 135,000 illegal migrants. In 2023, it was 95,000, so over a 40% increase in one year. This is simply unsustainable. Of course, we need to treat everyone who has a sickness or emergency. But we established those hospitals with Spanish taxpayer funds, including equipment and personnel, to meet the needs of a certain number of people. And who is introducing all these immigrants? The NGOs, using our money. This is incredibly stupid, to be honest. Standing against them is just self-defense. If you don’t defend yourself, you don’t exist.
What’s next for national conservatives in Brussels? The Parliament is one thing, but the Patriots are also expected to gain new members in the Council, with Kickl and Babiš, for example. How will that change the political dynamics?
The EPP and the S&D are very concerned. They’re worried because they see the reality: that the Patriots, ECR, and ESN, as small as they are now, are projected to become a majority in the near future. The same is true for the Council, albeit a bit slower, so they are changing the rules of the game and want to replace unanimity with qualified majority voting. It’s like that poem they recite in the movie Interstellar: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” The establishment is not going to let go of its power freely and happily. They are going to fight stronger than ever, and try to destroy us before we can bring about meaningful change. Here in Spain, VOX has been suffering unprecedented attacks lately and we are going to have more and more in the future. Believe me, what we see now is nothing in comparison. In the future, they are going to attack us much harder and stronger. They are not going to enter “that good night” freely. But we will have to win, no matter how long it takes. We’ve been ruled by them for half a century so there’s a lot of old politics to dismantle. I don’t know if I’m going to see that. But everything we do now is like planting a seed in the soil and watching the plant grow. It’s growing stronger and faster now, but I don’t know if I’ll be there to see the harvest. Still, I’m happy to see it planted, and that’s enough for me. That’s also the main thing for VOX. PM Orbán said he spent 16 years in opposition—well, VOX spent none, because the Spanish opposition is PP and they do nothing with it. It’ll take a couple more years until we’re the opposition, and a few more until we’re in government. But I have patience. Yes, I know Spain needs us to hurry, as it can’t survive another 50 years like this. Can we do it in four years? We’ll see, but I think we can.
