Spain’s ruling Socialist party has asked public prosecutors to investigate remarks made by the leader of the far-right Vox party in which he claimed a time would come when the Spanish people would want to see Pedro Sánchez “strung up by his feet”.
It claims Santiago Abascal’s comments, made in an interview published on Sunday by the Argentinian newspaper Clarín, are “an incitement to hatred and even violence” and represent “a serious breach of coexistence and the constitutional order”. It also argues that the Vox leader is trying to compare the prime minister to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was shot by partisans and strung up by his feet in April 1945.
Vox has stepped up its attacks on Sánchez since he secured a second term in office by agreeing to offer a deeply controversial amnesty to Catalan separatists in return for the support of the region’s two main pro-independence parties.
The far-right party, which fiercely opposes Catalan independence, has previously described Sánchez’s deal with the two parties as “a coup d’état in capital letters”. Its MPs have attended protests outside the Socialist party’s Madrid headquarters that have led to violent skirmishes between police and neo-fascist activists.
Abascal, who flew to Argentina over the weekend to attend the inauguration of the county’s new, radical libertarian president, Javier Milei, told Clarín that Sánchez was a politician without principles or “moral limits”. He added: “He can trample laws, he can do anything, he can put national unity in jeopardy. There will come a time when the people will want to see him strung up by his feet.”
Sánchez said Abascal’s rhetoric was an attempt to turn Spain “into a place where hate speech and confrontation reigns”, while Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said the Vox leader’s words harked back to the Franco dictatorship. “That kind of language, in which a political leader incites violence, hasn’t been heard in Spain for many decades, since decades that were very dark,” Albares said.
On Tuesday, the Socialist party said it would be referring the matter to the public prosecutor’s office. A day later, El País published excerpts from the party’s 21-page official complaint in which it took particular issue with Abascal’s tone and alleged allusion.
“These statements represent a further grave step in the serious accusations that are piling up, and which are now culminating in the identification of the prime minister as a dictator, through the evocation of him being ‘strung up by his feet’, which is a clear allusion to the death of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 April 1945,” the complaint said.
“The expression used is even more serious as it not only identifies the prime minister, who was democratically elected, with a dictator, but also goes on to use the comparison to suggest that a time will come when the people will want to use violence against him, just as happened to Benito Mussolini.”
Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) – which came first in July’s inconclusive general election but could not muster the necessary support to form a government despite the backing of Vox and two other, smaller parties – has condemned Abascal’s words but accused the Socialists of “playing the victim”.
“The PP would like to point out that it’s possible to act as the opposition to the Socialist party without giving media oxygen to Pedro Sánchez,” the party said on Monday. “As such, we do not share the comments made by Santiago Abascal.”
Vox, which had a poor election in July, dropping from 52 seats to 33, is hoping to harness the Catalan amnesty issue to help win back supporters who have returned to the PP. It is also continuing to use provocative language and culture war issues in an attempt to stay relevant. Earlier this week, the far-right party succeeded in its attempt to scrap a 23-year-old annual cultural festival in the north-eastern city of Huesca by threatening to scupper the upcoming budget proposed by the city’s PP-run council.
Vox had argued that the Periferias festival – which was this year dedicated to Gypsy culture – was a waste of money that “serves only to shower arty-farty trendy lefties with thousands of euros”.
