El País changed the literal quote in its headline, as Spanish media frequently do, and the literal quote in Clarin is not completely clear, either, with the repetition of a chunk of the phrase but, notwithstanding any clarification Clarin would like to make, the position of the comma or the repetition of a relative pronoun or a verb don’t change the meat of Abascal’s phrase: “the people” plus “will want” plus “to hang Sánchez by his feet”. There’s not a lot of wriggle room in that for the Vox leader to try and get out of it. The attempt by Vox MEP Tertsch, accompanying Abascal on the Argentina trip for Milei’s inauguration, to claim it was just a history lesson, not a suggestion of violence against the prime minister, doesn’t help.
Vox is still the third largest party in Spain’s lower house of parliament but dropped from 52 to 33 seats at the general election in July, from about 15% of the vote to about 11%. While the next general election, barring a collapse of the new left-wing coalition, won’t be until 2027, Vox is clearly motivated to keep making headlines, grabbing attention and remaining near the top of the media agenda. And if it can be done in the context of the global media culture and poltical battles, so much the better, from their perspective. Orban, Bolsonaro, Peña, as well as Israel’s Foreign Secretary, Eli Cohen—who last week was retweeting Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders on “Jordan is Palestine” and forced deportation, a crime against humanity—were all in Buenos Aires for Milei too.
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