The municipal spokesperson and Vox deputy, Javier Ortega Smith, has been disapproved this afternoon at the Madrid City Council for the events that took place on December 22 when he aggressively confronted the co-spokesperson of Más Madrid, Eduardo Rubiño, during the last plenary session. municipal of 2023.
The sum of the votes of Más Madrid, PSOE and PP – a former partner of Vox in the previous legislature – has certified a disapproval that, however, is not binding. The personal and non-transferable nature of the councilor’s record will allow the ultra spokesperson to continue as an elected representative despite this political condemnation of rejection appearing in his file.
By then, however, neither Ortega Smith nor the rest of the Vox councilors were in the chamber when they decided to leave it, claiming to feel like victims of censorship by enjoying one, and not two, speaking turns. “There are still 30 more minutes of reply from the municipal government team and the spokespersons for Más Madrid and the PSOE-M, when they have not even given me a new five-minute turn to answer,” he denounced.
“Therefore, we will abandon this plenary session because I am not interested in listening to you, because you have not wanted to listen to me,” he summarized, after which they left the plenary hall.
The debate has been opened by Rita Maestre who has established Más Madrid’s position with a resounding ‘no’ to Ortega Smith but also with a ‘no’ to “a violent and anti-democratic way of exercising politics in our institutions.” The opposition leader has accused Vox of “normalizing” violence and replacing “words with physical aggression, as Ortega Smith, a common thug, has demonstrated.”
The vice mayor of Madrid, Inma Sanz, for her part, has criticized the attitude of the Vox spokesperson, Javier Ortega Smith. “Acts for which he must accept his mistake and hand over the councilman’s certificate,” she declared, also accusing the left of “crippling and polarizing” the environment from the beginning of democracy until now.
From the podium, Sanz has criticized Ortega’s attitude but “also the infinite hypocrisy of the left wing” and introducing national politics into the debate has proclaimed that the beginning of polarization in Spain began with the Tinell Pact between the PSC, Republican Left and Initiative for Catalonia-Greens-United and Alternative Left.
The PSOE spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, Reyes Maroto, for her part, has called on the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the rest of his municipal group to “take another step” in condemning the aggression by Javier Ortega Smith against a councilor from Más Madrid and request the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to break the pacts with Vox.
Maroto has assured that the Spanish deserve politicians who defend democratic quality and added that Ortega Smith, with his actions, “has shown us that he cannot continue being a councilor or deputy.”
