Santiago Abascal opened this Friday Vox’s campaign for the general elections on November 29 with an unprecedented gesture in Spanish politics: publicly thanking the prayers of those who sustain the country on their knees. Before thousands of people gathered in Plaza de Colón, under a cold and unpleasant afternoon and a sea of red-and-yellow flags, the president of Vox claimed the «praying rearguard» of Spain and assured that he feels no «shame» in showing his feelings, his beliefs, and his faith.
«I asked them to pray for Spain»
Abascal revealed how he prepared his interview on La Revuelta, which aired this week. «I wasn’t studying or rehearsing questions. I went to Cerro de los Ángeles, requested a meeting with the Discalced Carmelites, had a wonderful encounter with those women, and asked them to pray for Spain,» he recounted before the square. He also asked the nuns to pray for him.
After thanking the support of all those who pray for him and his party, he closed that passage with the old Castilian saying: «Praying for Spain, but also striking with the mallet.»
The candidate also evoked his father, Santiago Abascal Escuza, who passed away in 2017, thanked the support of his wife, Lidia Bedman, and stated that he is in politics for his five children «and those of the rest of Spaniards.» «I am here because I share with you the longing for a better Spain, a much better Spain,» he said.
A hill with a memory of martyrdom
The place chosen by Abascal is loaded with meaning. At Cerro de los Ángeles, the geographic center of the peninsula, Alfonso XIII consecrated Spain to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1919. In 1936 the monument was shot at and dynamited, and the Carmelites whom Saint Maravillas of Jesus had brought there had to abandon their convent. They returned amid ruins, with hunger and scarcity, and since then the community has maintained a silent and constant prayer for the nation.
«Everything is at stake»
On the political front, Abascal called for massive mobilization and framed the elections in dramatic terms. «November 29 is not a normal thing, these are not just any elections, they are existential for Spain: everything is at stake,» he proclaimed. «These are absolutely decisive elections for Spain and for Europe,» he insisted.
The leader of Vox described the government as a «plague» and warned that if they fail to remove it from La Moncloa, «Spain will probably suffer too much, far too much, to be able to recover.» He also urged his supporters not to take anything for granted: «I want to ask you to fight our worst enemy: confidence and the damn polls that say this is already decided.»
Regarding the campaign slogan, «It’s common sense,» Abascal listed his priorities: «It is common sense to put the nation first, to demand an end to overregulation that prevents us from competing in a very difficult world, an end to the fiscal siege against the middle classes that is suffocating our people […] and enough of the migratory invasion.»