Abascal warns PP: Vox will leave regional coalitions if agreements are not respected
At Vox's General Assembly in Madrid, Santiago Abascal demanded respect from the PP but said his party has the courage to repeat its 2024 withdrawal from regional governments if coalition agreements are breached, while also launching fierce attacks on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Abascal's dual message to coalition partners
Santiago Abascal delivered a speech at Vox's 2026 General Assembly in Madrid on Saturday, simultaneously calling for respect toward the PP and warning that his party will not hesitate to abandon the three regional coalition governments it joined after the last elections. Addressing the vice-presidents of Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León (Óscar Fernández, Alejandro Nolasco and Carlos Pollán), he urged them to enforce the signed agreements "to the letter, without trick or delay" and to remain "vigilant."
I ask you to respect our government partners, just as we demand respect from them.
The Vox leader made clear that principles outweigh office. "If the moment comes, and we don't want it to, we must have the courage to leave the governments, as we did in the past," he said, referencing Vox's withdrawal from five autonomous executives in July 2024. Acknowledging the limitations of sharing power, he added that the party now applies "the scalpel rather than the chainsaw" because "we have not won yet."
Attacks on Sánchez
Abascal devoted a sharp section of his address to the prime minister, whom he labelled "unbalanced," "a madman," "a psychopath" and "a wretch." He accused Pedro Sánchez of wishing for "any catastrophe, epidemic or war" to distract from his "disgusting corruption" and claimed Spanish military personnel reached Venezuela to assist with the double earthquake before they arrived in Valencia during the DANA floods.
Today in Spain there is a madman at the wheel, a dangerous madman.
Party accounts and international ambitions
The assembly approved the 2025 accounts with 98.2 percent support. Abascal pledged increased funding for the Fundación Disenso to function as a think tank and to send international observers "to monitor all the communists, all the narcos and all the scum in Latin America."
Deregulation push
José María Figaredo, Vox's national spokesperson for economy and deregulation, presented a deregulation programme that includes abolishing equality and LGBTI programmes in companies, scrapping mandatory working-time registration, creating a single-market law for all of Spain and passing "harmonisation" laws against "autonomic chaos." The vice-presidents of Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León flanked him on stage.
Coalition test ahead in Andalusia
Ignacio Garriga, the party's vice-president and secretary general, celebrated Vox's integration into the three regional governments and said work continues to achieve the same in Andalusia. The assembly comes 48 hours before the investiture debate of Juanma Moreno in the southern region, where negotiations remain open without a final agreement.
