The leader of Spanish party Vox, Santiago Abascal, has warned his party will regard regional pacts with the centre-wing People’s Party (PP) as “broken” if the regional governments in which they participate do not use “all political and legal means” to prevent migrant minors from being sent to different locations from the Canary Islands.
“All regional governments that do not use all political and legal means to prevent the distribution of [unaccompanied minors] throughout Spain will be considered broken. We will not be accomplices to robberies, machete-fights or rapes,” Abascal said on July 8.
PP president Alberto Núñez Feijóo claimed Vox would not carry out the threats given it had suggested similar action in June only to back down about 10 days later.
Both parties have government agreements in the Spanish regions of Castilla y León, Extremadura, Aragón, Murcia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands where the PP holds the presidency and Vox either the vice-presidency or officially supports the governments.
In 2023, Spain spent a record €11.5 million to expel around 5,000 of the approximately 57,000 immigrants who arrived that year.
It is the central Executive, or council of ministers, that decides upon the relocation of illegal immigrants arriving in the Canary Islands throughout the country, a responsibility specifically of the interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
Spain’s Vox party, led by Santiago Abascal, is leaving the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group to join the Patriots for Europe spearheaded by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.https://t.co/h0CwxieKwR
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 5, 2024
