Santiago Abascal has put immigration at the center of Spain's election campaign, defending case-by-case deportations of immigrants and warning his rivals on the right that Vox is not running to be anyone's junior partner.
In an interview with La Vanguardia published on Sunday, the Vox leader and candidate for prime minister said the deportations his party proposes must be carried out individually and respecting legal procedures. He placed immigration, tax cuts and economic deregulation among his priorities for the general election on November 29.
And he drew a clear line with the People's Party: "We are running for the presidency, not the vice-presidency," Abascal said, warning PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo that Vox's goal is to reach Moncloa, not to become vice-president in a government headed by Feijóo.
The polls: PP ahead, Vox third
The interview lands with the race tightening. The average of 15 polls compiled by Demócrata on October 24 puts the PP at 31.4%, the PSOE at 26.9% and Vox at 18.8%, followed by Sumar at 6.4%, Podemos at 3.1% and ERC at 2.2%.
Abascal said he considers Pedro Sánchez's political cycle exhausted, though he urged caution about expectations, recalling the 2023 general election, when results defied the forecasts of much of the polling industry. In the interview, conducted by journalists Lola García and Cristina Sen in Mallorca, he also accused the government of resorting to possible maneuvers to stay in power — claims he did not accompany with conclusive proof of electoral fraud, according to the report.
The pre-campaign is already marked by contacts between the PP and Vox to explore possible agreements, and by incidents at some of Abascal's events.
Sánchez fires back: a PP-Vox government would "go back 50 years"
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez answered the same day, warning that a government of the right would mean "going back 50 years" in one stroke on debates such as abortion and dignified death. "Vox puts the ideas and the PP the ambition for power," Sánchez said, arguing that a PP government with Vox "does not represent an alternation" but an involution.
Sánchez defended a public pension system he described as sound, with solid accounts, and credited measures such as the minimum wage increase and the regularization of migrants with strengthening it. "If Feijóo and Vox are worried about the sustainability of pensions, they should tell employers to agree with the unions on a bigger pay rise for the middle class," he added.
The clash frames the central question of November 29: immigration and the regularization approved by Sánchez — legalizing up to 500,000 undocumented migrants — against Vox's promise of deportations, case by case, and a right-wing bloc whose two leaders are already arguing over who would lead it.
Reporting based on Demócrata, La Vanguardia via Demócrata, Cadena SER, El Español via El Diestro and Europa Press.