Vox's "intimidation" policy in Congress: anecdote or category?

Madrid / BarcelonaThe controversial reaction of Vox deputy José María Sánchez García, who confronted the presidency of Congress during the debate of a non-law proposal (PNL) on historical memory, has put the focus on the deterioration of parliamentarism. "What happened is not an anecdote. It is a way of doing politics based on noise, intimidation, and disregard for the basic rules of democratic coexistence." This is the conclusion drawn from this episode by the parties of the plurinational majority, as stated in an institutional declaration promoted this Wednesday by the PSOE. Various parliamentary sources from the parties that have signed it, consulted by ARA, agree in diagnosing that the presence of Vox in the lower house has caused a change in parliamentary life, which worsens year after year. The declaration could not be read at the end of Wednesday's plenary session because Vox, PP, and UPN refused to sign it.

The popular party, in full negotiation with the far-right in several autonomous communities, has looked the other way, just as they do when faced with journalists' complaints about the behavior of far-right agitators accredited as press. In the corridors of the lower house, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has dodged media questions on this matter, and the reaction has come in a press conference at the Senate, where the popular spokesperson, Alicia García, has described the Vox deputy's attitude as "shameful." To sign the declaration, the PP demanded to add that the presidency of Congress does tolerate other questionable behaviors from other political formations and that Sánchez García's version be accepted, who justified his actions because, according to him, ERC deputy Jordi Salvador told him "Nazi, murderer, illiterate, and asshole", words that Esquerra has denied the republican used. The PSOE has refused to include it.

The fact is that it is unprecedented for a deputy to go up to where the Presidency of Congress is seated and confront them in this way. In fact, the socialists have compared the scene to the attempted coup d'état of 23-F. "The only thing I was thinking was where the slap would come from," admitted the socialist Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis hours after the events, who at that time was leading the plenary session in place of Francina Armengol. Faced with the surprise at this virulence – with a shout a few centimeters from his face – the first vice-president of the lower house, who had already repeatedly called Sánchez García to order before expelling him from the plenary session, admits that he did not react in time to apply an article of the Congress's regulations – article 106 – which would have allowed him to be vetoed for a month.

For the moment, while the PSOE studies ways to impose a more serious sanction on him, the Vox deputy has not been able to participate in this Wednesday's plenary session. His absence, in fact, has allowed the PNL being debated when Sánchez García exploded, which proposes to document the burning of books during Francoism, to be approved. It is not the first time that the far-right deputy has had an outburst. The one that had the most media impact was in 2021 when he called a PSOE deputy "witch" during a plenary session, but socialist sources explain that this "obsessive" and "ill-mannered" attitude is habitual in Sánchez García and is exacerbated in debates related to feminism or democratic memory. That Vox has rallied around him has not surprised them because, given the endorsement of this repeated behavior, it is evident that this tense climate is what suits them.