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Javier Ortega Smith

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In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Ortega and the second or maternal family name is Smith-Molina.
Javier Ortega Smith
Ortega Smith in 2018
Secretary-General of Vox
In office
5 March 2016 – 6 October 2022
PresidentSantiago Abascal
Preceded byIván Espinosa de los Monteros
Succeeded byIgnacio Garriga
Member of the Congress of Deputies
Incumbent
Assumed office
21 May 2019
ConstituencyMadrid
Member of the City Council of Madrid
Incumbent
Assumed office
15 June 2019
Personal details
Born
Francisco Javier Ortega Smith-Molina

(1968-08-28) 28 August 1968 (age 56)
Madrid, Spain
Citizenship
  • Spain
  • Argentina
Political partyVox (2014–present)
Other political
affiliations		FE de las JONS (1985–1991)
Spouse
Paulina Sánchez del Río Nájera
​
​
(m. 2021)​
Alma materUniversity of Alcalá
Comillas Pontifical University

Francisco Javier Ortega Smith-Molina (Spanish pronunciation: [smið.moˈlina]; born 28 August 1968) is a Spanish lawyer and politician.[1] He served as Secretary-General of Vox between 2014 and 2022,[2] making him the second most prominent person in the party after its president Santiago Abascal.[3] He serves as a member of both the Congress of Deputies and the Madrid City Council since 2019.

Biography

Ortega Smith was born on 28 August 1968 in Madrid. His father, Víctor Manuel Ortega Fernández-Arias, is Spanish, and a lawyer by training. His mother, Ana María Smith-Molina Robbiati, is an Argentine, of English and Italian descent. She was born in a well-off Porteño family whose wealth comes from construction.[4] He holds dual Spanish and Argentine citizenship.[5] The son and grandson of lawyers,[6] Ortega Smith is also a cousin of Juan Chicharro Ortega, general in reserve duty and chief executive officer of the Francisco Franco National Foundation, whom Ortega Smith keeps a close relationship with.[7] His three brothers have had business careers, becoming business owners.[8] Despite his family living in the Arturo Soria area of Madrid (in Ciudad Lineal), he studied at the San Agustín School at Padre Damián Street, Chamartín.[5] He later took studies in Law in an educational centre in Toledo dependent of the Complutense University of Madrid, finishing his degree at the University of Alcalá.[5]

Collaborator in Así, theoretical bulletin of Falange Española de las JONS of Ciudad Lineal, in 1986 he signed in this journal the article «No olvidar» (Do not forget), where Ortega Smith extolled the figure of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and glorified the interwar Falange party.[9]

He reportedly spent 9 months fulfilling the mandatory military conscription within the COE 13, part of the Special Operations Groups (GOE), located in the San Pedro Base, Colmenar Viejo.[10][3] He was a keen practitioner of martial arts until a knee injury prevented him from continuing.[5]

He stood in the 1994 European Parliament election as candidate of the Foro-CDS coalition headed by science popularizer Eduard Punset.[11][6]

Settled in Chamberí, Ortega Smith started a professional career as lawyer.[12] In 2012 he was hired as lawyer of Santiago Abascal during a trial at the Audiencia Nacional against some individuals who had allegedly verbally abused Abascal in the Basque Country years ago; accompanied in the trial by Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, this trio, along with the wife of the latter, Rocío Monasterio, became close acquaintances.[13] He worked in the judicial department of the DENAES Foundation ("for the Defence of the Spanish Nation"), also serving as spokesman of the organisation.[14]

Ortega Smith during a Vox rally in 2018

A founding member of Vox, he was included in 2013 as provisional Vice-President of the organisation in the procedure for the registration of the political party in the Ministry of the Interior required for its legalisation.[15] He headed the Vox electoral list for the 2015 municipal election in Madrid.[16] He also bid for a seat of senator representing Madrid in the 2015 and 2016 general elections, failing to become a member of the Upper House after receiving, respectively, 34,702 and 26,781 votes, well short of the 725,719 and 720,901 votes obtained by the last elected senator in each election.[17][18]

In June 2016 he took part in a propaganda stunt along with other Vox members in Gibraltar, spreading a Spanish flag in the British overseas territory. To avoid being arrested he fled swimming away from the Rock.[19] Tasked with managing the judicial strategy of Vox,[3] he played a role in the popular accusation exerted by Vox in the judicial proceedings at the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, the Audiencia Nacional and the Supreme Court against Catalan separatist leaders facing criminal charges, including the televised oral trial.[20]

After the 2018 Andalusian regional election, he was the national delegate of the party signing the accord with the People's Party for the composition of the Board of the Parliament of Andalusia that ultimately gained Vox a seat in it, thereby rapidly frustrating the attempt to establish a cordon sanitaire around the far right party by the rest of parliamentary forces.[21]

Ortega Smith, who ran second in the Vox list in Madrid for the Congress of Deputies vis-à-vis the 28 April 2019 general election, was elected member of the 13th term of the Congress of Deputies. He also ran first in the Vox list in the 26 May 2019 Madrid municipal election, and became municipal councillor.

In October 2019 Ortega Smith accused Las Trece Rosas (thirteen young female members of the Unified Socialist Youth executed by a Francoist firing squad shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War), of having been "torturers", "murderers" and "rapists" providing no evidence of it. Not even the Francoist regime itself accused them of any such crimes, having sentenced them to death merely on the basis of the generic "adhesion to the rebellion".[22]

On 10 March 2020, during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Vox confirmed that Ortega Smith had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.[23] Ortega Smith, who had travelled to Lombardy in February,[24] showed symptoms similar to those of the Coronavirus two days before during a party convention celebrated at Vistalegre attended by 9,000 party sympathizers, where he visibly hugged, shook hands and kissed plenty of people.[25][26] On 7 March he had also reportedly greeted the 1,100 guests to a dinner in Jaén one by one.[27]

In October 2022 he was replaced as Secretary general for Ignacio Garriga, as a way of closing inner party crisis after Macarena Olona left the organisation.[2]

Stances

Ortega Smith is a staunch militarist.[28] He argues that the history of Spain is "inalienable" and defines it as inextricably "linked to the sword and the cross".[29] According to Guillermo Fernández, the 2018 Vistalegre bullring speech by Ortega Smith—that started by praising the "leading" role of Spanish forces in the 1571 victory of the Battle of Lepanto over "barbarism", the aim being to fuel a sense of the Nation's historical destiny–was an attempt to connect with the discursive and ideological ideas of the Spanish extreme right.[30] As guest at the demonstration of the policial association Jusapol in Barcelona on 29 September 2018, his speech during the event included a diatribe against the European Union.[31] He has scorned illegal immigrants as alleged "carriers of serious infectious diseases".[32]

He has defended José Antonio Primo de Rivera to be "one of the great men in history".[33][34] In October 2019, he provoked a controversy by accusing "Las Trece Rosas" (thirteen young women executed by the Franco regime in August 1939) of having been 'torturers', 'murderers' and 'rapists'. The Franco regime itself accused them only of having defended the Spanish Republic during the Civil War.[35] In 2012, he organised demonstrations in front of the Argentinean embassy against the then President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whom he accused of supporting Venezuela and Iran, and called for Argentina's expulsion from the G20.[citation needed] He defends pro-Israeli positions.[8] and he has also defended aspects of Argentina's military junta at a conference in Buenos Aires in August 2019.[citation needed]

Ancestry

References

  1. ^
    • "Ortega Smith, sobre el falangista Primo de Rivera: "Es un magnífico patriota, un gran ideólogo político"". InfoLibre. 16 May 2019.
    • "Ortega Smith, sobre las Trece Rosas: "Nunca voy a pedir perdón por algo que es verdad"". 20minutos.es. 8 October 2019.
    • Intxausti, Aurora (4 November 2019). "Ortega Smith acusa a las 13 Rosas de Madrid de "torturar, asesinar y violar"". El País.
    • "La polémica celebración de La Toma de Granada vuelve con la prohibición de "símbolos extremistas"". eldiario.es. 1 January 2020.
    • , 26 November 2019 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. ^ a b "Abascal es desempallega d'Ortega Smith i promociona Ignacio Garriga". VilaWeb (in Catalan). Retrieved 2022-10-08.
  3. ^ a b c "Vox, l'ariet ultra de la judicatura espanyola contra l'independentisme". La Directa. 2018-06-01.
  4. ^ Palmero, María (1 December 2019). "Ortega Smith (Vox), al descubierto: sus mujeres, sus casas, su sueldo, su familia y más". Voz Pópuli.
  5. ^ a b c d Ballesteros, Roberto R. (2018-12-29). "Karateca, boina verde y montañero: así es el negociador de Vox en la Junta de Andalucía". El Confidencial.
  6. ^ a b Amón, Rubén (12 February 2019). "El 'mitin' judicial de Vox". El País.
  7. ^ Rubio, Mariela (11 March 2019). "La Fundación Francisco Franco reconoce vínculos entre sus dirigentes y líderes de Vox". Cadena Ser.
  8. ^ a b "Ortega Smith & Wesson".
  9. ^ Maestre, Antonio (15 May 2019). "El pasado falangista de Javier Ortega Smith". La Marea.
  10. ^ "Estas son las fotografías que demuestran que Ortega Smith fue 'boina verde'". elconfidencialdigital.com. 13 May 2019.
  11. ^ Sangiao, Sergio (23 January 2019). "Los tránsfugas de Abascal". CTXT.
  12. ^ Molpeceres, Diego (13 January 2019). "Ortega Smith, el 'brazo de hierro' de Abascal que quiso conquistar Gibraltar a nado". Voz Pópuli.
  13. ^ González, Miguel (16 April 2019). "Abascal, el político que teorizó el "nacionalismo reaccionario"". El País.
  14. ^ "Aguirre rep el suport dels nacionalistes espanyols de DENAES". Nació Digital. 2012-05-22.
  15. ^ López Fonseca, Óscar (2014-01-23). "Vox se valió de tres pequeños empresarios para ocultar su fundación a sus rivales del PP". Voz Pópuli.
  16. ^ "VOX pide un segundo recuento de votos "para que no se produzcan los errores de Andalucía"". 20minutos.es. 2015-05-24.
  17. ^ Junta Electoral Central: "Resolución de 26 de enero de 2016, de la Presidencia de la Junta Electoral Central, por la que se publica el resumen de los resultados de las elecciones al Congreso de los Diputados y al Senado convocadas por Real Decreto 977/2015, de 26 de octubre, y celebradas el 20 de diciembre de 2015, conforme a las actas de escrutinio general y de proclamación de electos remitidas por las correspondientes Juntas Electorales Provinciales y por las Juntas Electorales de Ceuta y de Melilla" (PDF). Boletín Oficial del Estado (25): 7917–7990. 29 January 2016. ISSN 0212-033X.
  18. ^ Junta Electoral Central: "Acuerdo de 20 de julio de 2016, de la Junta Electoral Central, por el que se publica el resumen de los resultados de las elecciones al Congreso de los Diputados y al Senado convocadas por Real Decreto 184/2016, de 3 de mayo, y celebradas el 26 de junio de 2016, conforme a las actas de escrutinio general y de proclamación de electos remitidas por las correspondientes Juntas Electorales Provinciales y por las Juntas Electorales de Ceuta y de Melilla". Boletín Oficial del Estado (176): 51661–51727. 22 July 2016. ISSN 0212-033X.
  19. ^ "La nueva 'hazaña' de Vox: 'conquistar' Gibraltar con una bandera española". Cadena Ser. 2016-06-21.
  20. ^ "VOX rechaza que Junqueras sea hombre de paz: "Es calculador, frío y está al frente de una organización delictiva"". Europa Press. 2018-01-05.
  21. ^ Ortego, Luis (4 January 2019). "El peaje de una foto y el cordón sanitario". El País.
  22. ^ Blanco, Patricia R. (2019-10-04). "La falacia de Ortega Smith sobre las Trece Rosas que el propio régimen de Franco desmiente". El País.
  23. ^ "Javier Ortega Smith da positivo por coronavirus". El Mundo. 2020-03-10.
  24. ^ Esteban, Paloma (11 March 2020). "De Milán a Vitoria: el viaje de Ortega Smith por los principales focos del coronavirus". El Confidencial.
  25. ^ "Ortega Smith mostró síntomas del coronavirus en Vistalegre". ABC. 10 March 2020.
  26. ^ "Los besos y apretones de manos de Ortega Smith en Vistalegre: su baño de masas con el coronavirus". El Español. 10 March 2020.
  27. ^ Liébana, José M. (10 March 2020). "Los dos concejales de Vox en Jaén se quedan en casa para evitar contagios". El Ideal.
  28. ^ Cantarero, Joan (4 April 2019). "Ortega Smith & Wesson". El Crític.
  29. ^ Ramírez, Daniel (16 October 2018). "Vox recupera el brindis de los Tercios de Flandes: "Que el traidor a España no encuentre perdón"". El Español.
  30. ^ Fernández, Guillermo (10 October 2018). "Vox abre la puerta". CTXT.
  31. ^ Gutiérrez-Rubí, Antoni (2018-09-30). "La voz de Vox". La Vanguardia.
  32. ^ "El vídeo más difundido de Ortega Smith tras conocerse su positivo por coronavirus". TheHuffPost. 10 March 2020.
  33. ^ "Ortega Smith: "José Antonio Primo de Rivera es uno de los grandes hombres de la historia"". El Español. 16 May 2019.
  34. ^ "El brindis de Ortega Smith". La Marea. 17 May 2019.
  35. ^ Blanco, Patricia R. (4 October 2019). "La falacia de Ortega Smith sobre las Trece Rosas que el propio régimen de Franco desmiente". El País.
  36. ^
Party political offices
Preceded by Secretary General of Vox
Since September 2014 		Incumbent
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