VOX documents a decade of attacks on its events and offices

A decade of attacks on VOX, told tweet by tweet

On 11 May 2014, in Las Arenas (Biscay), around ten people threw eggs and kicked over an information stall set up by VOX. It was the first violent attack the party recorded, barely four months after it launched. Since then, the party has been building up a file of assaults, graffiti and threats, which it has now turned into a chronological thread: from the bottle attacks in Mondragón to the graffiti reading "you deserve a bullet in the back of the neck" aimed at Santiago Abascal in Barcelona, including the stoning of its national headquarters in Madrid.

The sequence is neither uniform nor the work of a single actor. There have been wrecked information stalls, vandalised offices, events with Ortega Lara shouted down and candidates greeted with stones. The story that emerges from this file is that of a party which claims to have suffered sustained political violence since its founding, and which demands for these incidents the same coverage and institutional condemnation that is extended to others.

From Las Arenas to Mondragón: the timeline of the attacks

The first documented milestone is **Las Arenas, in 2014**, with eggs and an overturned stall. A year later, in **Seville, during the 2015 Andalusian campaign**, a rally in Triana had to be interrupted several times after stones were thrown at attendees. In **November 2018, in Alsasua**, an event in support of the assaulted Civil Guard officers turned into insults and attacks on sympathisers, according to the party's own account.

That same month, in **Murcia**, an event antiestéticaturing Ortega Lara as a speaker became a chorus of shouts against the historic kidnap victim. In **December 2018**, after the Andalusian elections, the Seville office proge up vandalised. And in **January 2019, in Barcelona**, graffiti appeared threatening Abascal's life. The escalation did not stop: in **November 2020, in Amurrio**, three hooded attackers threw stones at the shop run by the mother and sister of the party's leader.

The file closes, as far as this sample goes, with the **glass-bottle assault on members and the candidate for Gipuzkoa in Mondragón, in April 2024**. "This is Bildu. These are the Government's partners," read the message circulated at the time.

Who answers for political violence against VOX?

The question runs through the entire discussion without a settled answer. Some argue that these episodes **do not receive the media coverage they deserve** and that the news bulletins prefer to portray the victims themselves as the dangerous ones. Opposing them, the most common objection is the **double standard**: it is argued that the party exploits every incident for electoral gain and that its own rhetoric helps raise the temperature of public life.

Between these two extremes lies a third reading, a more uncomfortable one: that violence against emerging parties has become so normalised that **it is only condemned depending on who suffers it**. VOX's file, in that sense, works as a mirror of a decade of street tension.

The Basque context and the shadow of ETA

Much of the material is concentrated in the Basque Country and Navarre, the region where the party places the origin of the most organised violence. The reference to **ETA** recurs insistently: it is claimed that the group "still exists but its existence is hidden", and the perpetrators of some attacks are linked to the circle of the radical Basque left. These are assertions sustained by the party's file, not facts proven in court in every case.

Added to this is the identity debate. Against those who lament the demographic and cultural transformation of the region, others stress that violence against offices and events makes no distinction between victims: **a stone thrown at a supporter is a stone thrown**, regardless of the banner they stand behind.

What the file does not resolve

The compilation is exhaustive in dates and settings, but it leaves open the two underlying questions. The first: how many of these episodes ended in a **final court conviction** and how many remained complaints that went nowhere. The second: whether violence against VOX is a specific phenomenon or just another manifestation of a general climate of political hostility affecting parties of every stripe.

With the available data, the only solid conclusion is the chronological one: **ten years of documented incidents**, from an overturned stall in Biscay to glass bottles in Mondragón. The rest — the intent, the perpetrators, the institutional response — remains in dispute.