In recent weeks, the journalist and president of EsRadio, Federico Jiménez Losantos, has linked Vox with the ultra-Catholic association or sect of Mexican origin known as El Yunque, as a result of the controversy over the Castilla y León protocol on abortion that put in a problem with the PP and publicly criticized the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and for the refusal of the greens to support the latter’s budgets.
Last Sunday, the former spokesperson for Vox in the Congress Macarena Olona, ??away from the formation of Santiago Abascal since last summer, did not want to confirm that relationship in the program Lo de Évole de La Sexta but gave rise to the insinuations of Jiménez Losantos: “With everything that has to do with alleged Vox ties to El Yunque, I have no idea. But my impression, my intuition, is that the decisions in Vox, those of ordinary management, were not made within Vox, and I had a greater feeling of fog around me every time when I looked up ”, Olona answered when asked by Jordi Évole for that alleged relationship. “I only know that I always listen to Federico very carefully. And I also know that in the face of very forceful statements by Federico, there has been no reaction, neither judicial nor non-judicial, to deny what he was affirming. Something that makes me listen to Federico with more attention,” he added.
In any case, the debate about a possible link between the far-right party and the sect of Mexican origin has aroused curiosity about the latter. What is an anvil? The National Organization of the Yunque or simply El Yunque is the name of an organization with paramilitary beginnings, secret, ultra-Catholic and extreme right of Mexican origin, which declares as its purpose “to defend the Catholic religion and fight against the forces of Satan” and establish “the kingdom of Christ on earth”.
This organization was qualified by the journalist Álvaro Delgado, author of a book in 2003 -El Yunque: La ultraderecha en el poder- which tells the history of the organization from its creation in 1953 in Puebla (Mexico) until then, as “a ultra-Catholic, anti-communist, anti-Semitic, anti-liberal group with fascist traits”.
The first time the existence of El Yunque was made public was in August 2000, just a few months after the presidential elections that marked the end of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regime in Mexico. In the midst of this environment, a journalistic note revealed that within the winning party, the National Action Party (PAN), there was a current headed by a secret Catholic organization.
Delgado’s investigation later recounted the arrival of El Yunque to public positions of political power in the year 2000, through the creation of “front groups” that operated in universities until at least the 1970s, as well as infiltration in civil organizations and in the PAN.
While the Yunque has been used by relevant figures of the Mexican left for propaganda purposes such as Subcomandante Marcos, who linked it to the leadership of the PAN, or the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who blamed him for organizing attacks against him. , there are sectors that deny that the organization exists with the magnitude and influence attributed to them. Undoubtedly, the secrecy attributed to it makes it very difficult to unravel its links and scope, which are supposed to be international.
El Yunque landed in Spain after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco so that the country would be governed “under evangelical dictates.” It is a secret society that does not work showing its identity, but rather operates from multiple associations or labels that try to influence society, as indicated in a document revealed by El Confidencial in 2012 by Catholic Fernando López Luengos made at the request of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, in which he established links between relevant members of HazteOír with El Yunque. He also cited other associations such as the Family Policy Institute or Professionals for Ethics.
López Luengos was sued by HazteOír for the report El Transparente de la Catedral de Toledo but the judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2014 for alleged violation of the right to honor as the author did not directly link the two organizations, although she considered the relationship between El Yunque accredited and “some of the members” of the organization HazteOír and declared that the report was “essentially truthful”.
A key character, according to various investigations, is Ignacio Arsuaga Rato (Rodrigo Rato’s third nephew and Abascal’s close friend) founder of HazteOír in 2001 and CitizenGo in 2013. In 2021, a WikiLeaks leak revealed in Spain by Público revealed how great fortunes and top executives financed Vox’s political rise through these organizations, indirect financing through support for Abascal’s electoral campaigns.
Another researcher, Santiago Mata, published in 2015 another investigation El Yunque in Spain: the secret society that divides Catholics (Amanecer), in which he included among the followers of El Yunque not only Arsuaga, but also Luis Losada, journalist collaborating with 13 TV, Jaime Urcelay, from Professionals for Ethics, Eduardo Hertfelder, president of the Family Policy Institute, and Leonor Tamayo, from the Grupo de Montaña Contracorriente, among others. These people were already identified in the trial in which López Luengos was acquitted by several witnesses as members of El Yunque. Mata also identified numerous associations that act under his doctrine: not only HazteOir and CitizenGo, but also Más Libres, Profesionales por la Ética, Actuall, Vota Valores, Institute for Family Policy, Organization for the Common Good and more.
In 2021, Mata himself published another book (Vox and the Yunque: The secret society that made Santiago Abascal great) in which he concluded that Abascal’s political career was also supported by El Yunque from his beginnings as head of the Foundation for the Defense of the Spanish Nation (Denaes).
A year ago, HazteOír broke with Vox, accusing it of being a “cowardly right-winger” using the epithet that those of Abascal use to ridicule the PP in the cultural battle that they are waging with the left over the pacts between the far-right formation and the popular ones on the occasion of the elections in Castilla y León. The ultra agitation movement demanded that the green formation clearly define itself regarding its big issues: the family, abortion and “gender ideology”, something that they understood that Vox did not do.
