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Spain’s New Nationalist Party Wants to Build a Wall to Keep Out Migrants

Vox wants to abolish Catalonia’s regional government, roll back feminist laws, and defend bullfighting.

A Vox party rally in Barcelona on Saturday, March 30, 2019.

A Vox party rally in Barcelona on Saturday, March 30, 2019.

Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

The week before he was due to testify, Santiago Abascal told a group of conservatives in Madrid how a crowd of separatists had heckled and pushed him as he was sworn in as a local councilor in Spain’s northern Basque region.

One guest at that dinner in 2012 was outraged by how little backing Abascal says he was getting from his colleagues in the People’s Party, the country’s traditional defender of right-wing values. Ivan Espinosa de los Monteros decided that if the PP wasn’t prepared to support Abascal at the trial, then he would.