{
  "id": 835186,
  "title": "Vox's 'Aranzadi moment'",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/14/el-momento-aranzadi-de-vox",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-14T03:30:01.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "El Pais",
    "slug": "el-pais",
    "url": "https://elpais.com/opinion/2026-08-14/el-momento-aranzadi-de-vox.html"
  },
  "original_language": "es",
  "account": "Vox is going through its Aranzadi moment. For some time, there has been a subtle unease on the far right about whether Alberto Núñez Feijóo will have the courage to repeal many left-wing laws if he reaches La Moncloa. Some even fear that the People's Party and Vox will embark on a futile legislative term. Santiago Abascal is now pinning everything on demonstrating that it is possible to control the Official State Gazette (BOE), and Feijóo should be concerned about the institutionalist turn of his partners.\n\nIt is no coincidence that this time Vox claims that it will not break its regional governments with the People's Party despite the distribution of minors who entered through Ceuta. What in 2024 was a political catastrophe is now going through the legal channel: Abascal's people say that, at most, they will file a complaint. The problem for the far right is that it can no longer jump off the ship, even if it wanted to.\n\nOn the one hand, Vox has grown up, and it's not the same as going through the populist momentum, where it was about releasing ethereal slogans to capitalize on frustration, as it is now, with consolidated voting niches that demand that their demands be turned into answers. The 2018-2024 period, where they basically talked about the procés or fought the cultural battle against supposed woke hegemony, is behind them: now their main flags are immigration, precariousness, and rural Spain.\n\nOn the other hand, Vox assumes that its current competition is not only with the PP but also with a series of extra-parliamentary parties that are also skilled at spurring political disaffection: at one time it was Se Acabó La Fiesta, but now many more are proliferating, even of a Falangist nature. The only way to differentiate themselves from them today is from within the institutions.\n\nThus, the far right no longer wants to be anti-system in form, but rather to use the state's mechanisms to transform it. A large part of its public opinion is already changing in this direction. It's striking to see these days many people close to Vox demanding that the Foreigners' Law be modified to accelerate the deportations of minors who crossed the border.\n\nThe far right has started to test the power of the small print. Their deputy Carlos Hernández Quero even explains to his young followers on social media how they are materializing their \"national priority,\" in this case, in the Valencian Community, exhibiting pages of the Official Gazette of the Generalitat.\n\nFeijóo should be worried that his partners are able to show people that laws can be changed. One of the main criticisms that the far right usually makes of the PP is its bureaucratic or immovivist tone, where everything is always very difficult to reform, and the demands of part of its electorate end up being stifled by apathy or conservatism.\n\nIt is added that the Populares are a party that always talks about management, rarely about transformation. In fact, part of the transfer of votes from Vox to the PP has a component that we could call the thirst for a chainsaw: there are voters who simply opt for Abascal, thinking that it will be the only way to tighten the screws on Feijóo if they govern, so that he doesn't back down in the face of the left.\n\nThe memory of the fact that not even with Mariano Rajoy's absolute majority were laws such as the abortion law or the Historical Memory law reversed —this one was simply left without funding— still lingers. In Spain, alternation has rarely been equal to rupture, as Podemos also criticized back in 2015.\n\nHowever, not everything depends on the PP's will, but on whether the arithmetic will be sufficient. Some Vox supporters are already fantasizing about a constitutional reform in areas where the aggravated procedure does not apply, seeing that some polls give the right more than 200 seats.\n\nIt is likely that part of Pedro Sánchez's strategy is not so much about governing again, but about ensuring that the left articulates a blocking minority that makes it difficult for a right-wing government to act: either by maintaining a strong weight in Congress or by reducing the possibility of PP and Vox taking over other state institutions.\n\nAll of this, without overlooking the fact that Abascal may tense up the legislature, or make it jump into the air, if he does not achieve his demands. Consequently, Vox no longer aspires to power to sell a few empty promises to its electorate. Its goal is to leave a mark, through legal changes, so as not to disappear as a small partner.\n\nSome of their recent disdain for the monarchy is not coincidental, aware that the Crown symbolizes the last pillar of our system as it currently exists —and so some of its voters see it. The left may not know it, but it is today the most interested in maintaining the 1978 Constitution as it was written.\n\nVox's Aranzadi moment has arrived: the leap from denouncing the \"rot\" of the system to using it in their favor to institutionalize their own ideology. Pro-system and legalist in methods, less moderate in ideological background.",
  "summary": "The far right no longer wants to be anti-system in form, but rather to use the state's mechanisms to transform it.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}