Vox has not managed to proclaim a list to the Congress of Deputies for the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife for the July 23 elections, from where he got a seat in the 2019 elections. “We do not know what it obeys or who benefits (…) when we have more information we will communicate it and we will give an account of what has happened”, has assured the candidate to head the plate, Alejandro Gómez. However, everything points to internal differences due to the order of the list that led to the joint resignation of the candidates who accompanied Gómez, when there were a few hours left to close the period offered by the provincial Electoral Board to proclaim them. Discrepancies, resignations or finger assignments with last-minute changes They have been practically a constant in the provincial branch of the far-right party.
Vox does not present a list to Congress for Santa Cruz de Tenerife after the resignation of several of its candidates
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Although it has not offered explanations, the party has taken measures: it has dissolved the Provincial Executive Committee of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and has created a manager with Gómez at the helm. Against “the members who have abandoned the candidacy” he has announced criminal actions and will try to appeal to the Electoral Board with the slightest hope of being able to present an alternative list. “Vox’s legal services are preparing the corresponding action,” Gómez limited himself to saying.
At the head of the list was campaigned as numbers 2 and 3 to the Congress by Manuel Molina, already former president of the Provincial Executive Committee of Vox in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Salvador Miguel Lucena, former first member. Sources close to the formation who have preferred to remain anonymous have alluded to their ambitions and the bad relationship between them with respect to number 1, whose candidacy was surprisingly imposed on June 22 as reasons for his resignation.
Precisely, Gómez was the first person in charge of the formation in the western province, which began its journey around May 2019. Although it seemed that he would be the candidate for Congress for Santa Cruz de Tenerife for the November 2019 elections, the party decided to designate Rubén Darío as number 1, a captain in the Merchant Navy, with a doctorate and seven books, but until then totally unknown in the provincial party.
Shortly after the elections, after winning the seat for Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in January 2021 the so-called men in black of Javier Ortega Smith landed in the Canary Islands so that the then provincial president of Santa Cruz de Tenerife resigned from his position. Tomás Fernández, then National Vice-Secretary for Organization; Marcos Cruz, former territorial director, and Jaime González Canomanuel, former coordinator of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, were in charge of the mission framed in the Vox primary process.
From that moment on, according to the sources consulted, the party becomes “a Russian roulette wheel” of names in which the struggle to achieve provincial power is unleashed. Hand in hand with the coordinator of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, Jaime González Canomanuel, who presented himself as a trusted man of Ortega-Smith in the Archipelago, the provincial manager was created, headed by Almudena Viota. She barely lasted a few months in office, accused of being very authoritarian. She succeeded him in the manager Manuel Concepción, in whose organization chart Manuel Molina was also integrated.
During his administration, the party was involved in the controversy over money raised in the Viva 21 event, held on October 8 and 9, 2021 in Madrid and which was supposedly intended for those affected by the volcano. The party issued a statement on November 17 in which it claimed that 3,200 euros had been transferred to the Parish of San Pío X in Todoque de La Palma. But shortly after, the top party officials in the province would also be invited to leave their positions: Concepción ceased to be provincial president of Vox and Canomanuel abandoned the position of coordinator of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, a position that has never been covered again. .
Without any provincial leadership and without the power to have any representation in the Canarian institutions, the party was adrift. In May 2022, a Vox statement announced the creation of the new Provincial Executive Committee in Santa Cruz de Tenerife led by the lawyer and former civil guard Manuel Molina. This designation came before of the Macarena Olona casewhich led to the replacement of Ortega-Smith from the leadership of Vox and a trusted man of Santiago Abascal by Ignacio Garriga.
With the national leadership of the party renewed since the end of 2022, Alejandro Gómez, who never left the formation, returned to count for Vox. The Law graduate and member of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Bar Association, who was accused of being gray and not very charismatic, was appointed as the party’s candidate for the Tenerife capital City Council, where the party obtained three councillors. And last week, he was named number 1 to Congress. This decision did not go down well with the provincial Executive Committee and Vox, for the moment, will not be able to choose to have deputies for this province after in the May 28 elections it was positioned as the force that grew the most in the islands: It went from having absolutely no representation in the island institutions to 34 councilors, six council councilors and three regional deputies.
The sources consulted point out that not even the party itself expected these results in an island where they have tried establish his anti-immigration discourse or get revenue from the consequences of the La Palma volcano; Although they managed to present themselves in practically all the institutions, some of the candidacies were repeated between city councils or councils (for example, the number 1 for the El Hierro Council was the same person who led the list for the El Rosario City Council, in Tenerife) and, in fact, He does not have cadres to attend his public offices in the Canary Islands.
