Vox, EH Bildu and the result of the PP following the advice of people like Federico Quevedo

In Spain there is a party that, to this day, on the eve of the new year 2026, still does not condemn ETA terrorism.

The infamous relationship of PSOE and PP with Bildu while they treat Vox as a stinker
The PP finally recognizes what Bildu is: now be coherent and support what Vox demanded

When we talk about ETA terrorism, we are talking about the murders of 853 people, including 22 children and babies, as well as thousands wounded and maimed, thousands extorted, 86 people kidnapped (10 of whom were murdered), and the exodus of 180,000 Basques who had to leave their native region because of ETA terrorism. All of this is what EH Bildu, an ally of the Sánchez government, refuses to condemn, without either Sánchez or the PSOE making any reproach.

Ignoring all of that, yesterday, on the TVE program "Mañaneros" (that propaganda arm at the service of the PSOE), one of the panelists, Federico Quevedo, criticized the announcement by the president of the People's Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, that he would not impose a cordon sanitaire on Vox but would on Bildu. Federico Quevedo said: "Bildu, today and now, is much more democratic than Vox as a political party, and in what they do and what they defend, it is much more democratic than Vox, and Feijóo should think very carefully about who he runs with in a general election." Federico Quevedo himself has He published that infamy on his Twitter account:

Let us remember that one of the founders of Vox is José Antonio Ortega Lara, a victim of ETA and the protagonist of the longest kidnapping perpetrated by that terrorist organization, who held him captive for 532 days in a hidden cell, where he was left to die when he was freed by the Civil Guard. The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, was threatened with death by ETA for years and has spent much of his life requiring a bodyguard as a result. Likewise, among the Vox MPs is Francisco José Alcaraz, brother and uncle of three children murdered by ETA in the brutal terrorist attack against the Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza on December 11, 1987.

In its 11 years of existence, Vox has never justified terrorism nor refused to condemn it. Regardless of whether people like the party and its proposals more or less, it is an objective fact that Vox is a democratic party that has always defended its ideas through legal and peaceful means.

Obviously, those miserable words of Federico Quevedo don't portray Vox: they portray him. But indirectly, they do a disservice to the party that for years clumsily followed his advice: the People's Party. Many readers of this blog would still be in school when I wrote an article in 2011 explaining Federico Quevedo's shifting opinions and his influence on the PP in matters such as the attacks on María San Gil, a courageous woman who confronted ETA in the Basque provinces like few others have.

This attitude of the current TVE pundit has a long history. On February 22, 2007, Federico Quevedo published a message from the PP in El Confidencial (at that time, part of his work as a journalist was dedicated to relaying what the PP told him) attacking Francisco José Alcaraz, then president of the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), stating that he had lost the PP's "favor". It was the beginning of a pressure campaign that did not cease until Alcaraz resigned as president of the AVT on March 6, 2008.

That pattern continued in the following years. In January 2010, Federico Quevedo attacked those of us who criticized Feijóo's betrayal of his promise of "linguistic freedom" in Galicia, calling us "hard-headed sectors" and equating us with separatists, simply for demanding that the Galician PP fulfill his promise.

On May 17, 2011, Federico Quevedo openly praised the "indignados" movement, when it was already more than clear that the extreme left was pulling the strings of that movement. Four years later we learned that the creators of Podemos directed that protest following instructions from the dictatorship of Hugo Chávez. Going back to 2011, three days after praising that far-left movement, Federico Quevedo revealed the reason for his support: the PP considered it to be "a movement that will punish the PSOE, not us," one of the many strategic errors committed by that party for following the advice of people like Federico Quevedo.

On April 28, 2012, Federico Quevedo went a step further in his defamation and wrote an article in El Confidencial about the criticism from ETA victims of Mariano Rajoy's government for its decision not to demand that the terrorists prisoners who apologize to their victims in order to be reintegrated into society. Federico Quevedo wrote: "I believe that the victims of terrorism and democratic society are on the same side, and it cannot be that the former are distancing themselves from the latter as they are doing." Thus, the same person who now considers EH Bildu more democratic than Vox, 13 years ago already pointed the finger at the victims of ETA, accusing them of distancing themselves from democratic society simply for demanding the same thing from Rajoy as from Zapatero: Memory, Dignity and Justice.

Now, that guy is back at it again from RTVE —the official mouthpiece of the Socialist government— to whitewash Bildu and demonize Vox, trying to convince us how "democratic" a party that doesn't condemn ETA terrorism really is. Will the PP make the mistake of listening to Federico Quevedo again? Time will tell. In any case, if the PP decides to listen to that fool and cozy up to Arnaldo Otegi's party instead of Ortega Lara's, it wouldn't be Vox that would suffer, precisely: for the PP, it would be political suicide.

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Photo: Elentir. Francisco José Alcaraz carrying a photo of his brother Pedro Ángel, murdered by ETA, during a rally of the Voices Against Terrorism platform on October 29, 2011.