The former vice president of Castilla y León Juan García-Gallardo assured this Wednesday that the wife of Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, receives since 2019 an annual remuneration of 60,000 euros “through a party provider” for providing “alleged social media consulting services to a company”, dedicated to “editorial matters”, which is in “losses”, something that, as he indicated, can be verified in the commercial registry.
The one who was the top leader of Vox in Castilla y León has recounted that he became aware of these events at a meeting of regional spokespersons of the party held in Barcelona, “two days before” that, according to his version, they presented him with “the blackmail” that he had to expel two “colleagues” from his group in the Cortes or, otherwise, he would be the one dismissed.
“Vox affiliates deserve to know, firstly, if the services are real or apparent, which is not clear to me, and if the market price of those services is correct,” he stated in an interview on the program ‘Espejo público’ on ‘Antena 3’, reported by Europa Press.
In this vein, García-Gallardo has demanded that this matter be clarified because earning “60,000 euros a year is not easy”. He has stressed that in Vox “there are many people with a full dedication” who prepare reports and talking points and “are earning misery wages”, while observing with “stupefaction” that “the president’s wife -of Vox- was earning” that amount.
Likewise, he has denounced that those “who decide the destiny of Vox” and “negotiate at the highest level” on behalf of Santiago Abascal's party “are not the official leaders who appear in the public organizational chart”, but “some gentlemen who, in theory, on paper, are mere suppliers of the party”.
García-Gallardo has added that he has not signed the manifesto promoted by former parliamentary spokesperson Iván Espinosa de los Monteros along with other former Vox officials, although he has expressed his respect for the initiative. “It would be very positive and constructive for the party if an extraordinary congress were held in which some of the issues could be clarified,” he pointed out.
Finally, he insisted that it is “time for the members” of Vox to know certain internal realities of the organization that “had been hinted at indirectly on some occasions,” but that “until now no one had said with such clarity.”
“Abascal pockets a third salary” and criticisms of Vox's drift
In another interview granted to the newspaper ‘El mundo’, García-Gallardo has gone further and has accused the president of Vox of pocketing a third salary using his wife's bank account for the aforementioned services that she provides to the company “which is in losses and in cause of dissolution”, while also lashing out against the party's current drift. “At this rate, only Abascal's pension plan will remain”, he stated.
Also has denounced that in Vox “if you disagree, they expel you”, alluding to the departures of Javier Ortega Smith and José Ángel Antelo, until now spokespersons in the Madrid City Council and in the Murcia Assembly, respectively. In his opinion, “what makes a party great is the plurality of charisma, the diversity of profiles”.
“But Abascal is not worried about that: he breathes easier because he does not see threatened a weak leadership in which he increasingly exercises a stronger iron fist at the level of power, but increasingly with less authority”, he concluded.