The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, nuanced his controversial statements yesterday predicting the possibility that the Spanish want the same end for Pedro Sánchez as Benito Mussolini had in Milan’s Loreto Square. And he did it in Rome, in an intervention at Atreiu, the ultra-conservative convention organized by his ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This was the stage that the leader of the Spanish far-right used to say that he does not want anyone, “not even a corrupt and a traitor”, to be hanged by his feet. “It is something that disgusts me whenever it has happened in history”, he stressed.
Abascal, who on Tuesday had been “delighted” with the idea that the PSOE would denounce him, and argued that it was “an opportunity to repeat point by point” his statements, yesterday accused the left of manipulating his words . “Sometimes it’s the same what we say and the language we use because sinistra (sinista is left in Italian) will always manipulate our words and hide our truths”, he said, at the beginning of the speech.
“This week in Spain, the sinister media and politics have twisted my words to make a violent caricature and lynch me in the public square – he continued. I know that this manipulation has reached Italy and I want to say that no, that I do not wish anyone, not even a corrupt person and a traitor, to be hanged by the feet”. Then he added that “others like this, those who do not respect human life, from conception to natural extinction”.
The controversy over Abascal’s words evoking the death of the Italian fascist dictator has also reached Italy, but Meloni decided to keep the invitation. It is the second time in a month that the president has publicly protected Abascal, after receiving him after the socialist president’s inauguration to hear his indignation at the amnesty law.
In addition to Abascal, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the tycoon Elon Musk, a hero for populists around the world, have passed through this edition of Atreiu. The owner of Tesla or the social network X held a meeting with the leader of Vox, who, according to a statement, conveyed to him the importance of X to “combat the ideological cancellation” of the woke culture. For his part, Musk explained to him that he knows him because of his “very interesting” interview with former Fox presenter Tucker Carlson, fired for giving wings to the fraud conspiracy in the elections that Joe Biden won.