In last week´s elections, the far-right VOX party lost 19 of the seats they held in congress and lost both of the seats they held in Congress, marking a significant blow to their manifesto of hatred, but that loss is much more damaging than they might admit, as the group has now lost legal powers.
Although the support for VOX did grow in some areas where they had been facilitated by the PP, overall, the message was clear, that the country does not accept their policies, but the loss of those seats means that Santiago Abascal’s party has now been deprived of two tools that during the last legislature have been key to its role in the opposition.
Having now retained just 33 seats in the Congress of Deputies, they will no longer be able to present appeals for unconstitutionality or motions of censure.
As stipulated in article 32 of the organic law of the Constitutional Court, only the President of the Government, the Ombudsman, and 50 parliamentarians -deputies or senators- who agree to sign one of these appeals are “legitimised to exercise the unconstitutionality appeal”.
Thus, the Vox parliamentary group will not be able, by itself, to try to knock down laws by these means. Abascal’s party will also be unable to present motions of no confidence alone, since the consensus of 35 parliamentarians is needed for this, two more than Vox will have in the Lower House. Throughout the last legislature, the formation appealed more than 40 regulations and presented two motions of censure against Pedro Sánchez, failing on both occasions.
Use of powers exercised so far
On February 13, 2020, the Abascal formation filed its first appeal denouncing before the guarantee body that 29 deputies from ERC, Bildu, Junts, the CUP and Unidas Podemos took advantage of the oath of the Constitution to “conjure” against it. This would only be the first in a long list that grew especially during the pandemic.
Abascal’s party also appealed the first two states of alarm, causing the court to declare the confinement and the six-month extension that was given to the state of emergency unconstitutional – in addition to the delegation of central powers to the autonomous communities. This has been Vox’s great victory in the courts, aired by its representatives over and over again until they claimed it (this time without much success) in the last electoral campaign. Another of his victorious appeals was the one that annulled the inclusion of Pablo Iglesias in the CNI delegate commission in 2020.
In addition, the training has led to the Constitutional Court several regulations related to social advances, such as the euthanasia law, the abortion law, and the trans law (these last two appeals are still pending resolution to this day). On another occasion, Vox appealed – without obtaining the support of the Court – the educational reform known as the Celáa law. The Court did not even admit to processing the appeal for the use of the bable in the Asturian Parliament, against the vote on the labour reform or against the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia on the minimum of 25% of teaching in Spanish in schools.
After the repeal of sedition and the embezzlement reform promoted by the Pedro Sánchez government, Vox filed another appeal that the Constitutional Court admitted for processing in March of this year.
The political formation has used these resources as an opposition tool since the beginning of the legislature, since in many cases there was no possibility that they would prosper. This technique will now be out of their reach. Those of Vox even included in their electoral program the promise to make the Constitutional Court disappear to integrate it into the Supreme Court as a sixth chamber.
Two unsuccessful motions
Like a large part of the appeals before the Constitutional Court, the motions of no confidence have been used by Vox as a tool to wear down the Government and try to gain weight in the opposition. The two presented in less than four years were born doomed to failure. The first took place in October 2020, was led by Santiago Abascal and received the only support of the 52 seats in his formation. All the rest of the parliamentary arch, including the PP, voted against the initiative in the Lower House.
At that time, the PP led by Pablo Casado took the opportunity to distance itself from VOX to his right and caused Abascal to lead the least supported motion in the history of democracy with his ‘no’. “We don’t want to be like you, we’re not like you,” Casado snapped at the VOX leader.
In March of this year, Vox tried to censor the Sánchez Executive again, presenting on this occasion the candidate Ramón Tamames, an 89-year-old ex-communist encouraged to show his “analysis of the situation in Spain” before Parliament. Yolanda Díaz and Pedro Sánchez used the occasion to show unity in the Government and lecture the former member of the PCE and the formation of Abascal for hours while Alberto Núñez Feijóo remained absent from the Chamber. This time the PP abstained, but the motion again failed miserably.
As the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo facilitated the VOX rise in the local elections, rather than distancing the party as Pablo Casado did, a situation which has come back to haunt him as that is the precise reason some of the smaller, independent parties, will now not support the PP to form a Government.
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