Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Valencia City Council is currently embroiled in a heated dispute centred around accusations of ideological persecution, as council members from the right-wing VOX party face a series of hate crime investigations and legal battles prompted by remarks made on social media.
Speaking to The European Conservative, Juan Manuel Badenas, a VOX council member and spokesperson, provided details of the escalating conflict, which he describes as an ideological campaign targeting his party.
The controversy began in May when a councilwoman from the far-left group Compromís filed a hate crime complaint against VOX councilwoman Cecilia Herrero. This complaint stemmed from a social media exchange between Herrero and a former Podemos deputy, who had originally entered Spain illegally. The former deputy, who once served in the Madrid assembly, had made inflammatory comments on social media inciting a “war” against the Spanish police.
Herrero responded to his post, telling him he should “go back to [his] country.” Compromís alleged that Herrero’s comment was racially motivated, although her words made no specific reference to race, addressing only his calls for violence and dissatisfaction with Spain.
“He was simply invited to return to his country, as he had shown his displeasure with Spain and incited the population to open warfare against the police,” Badenas told The European Conservative.
Following the filing of this complaint, Herrero began receiving online threats, some of which have led to a separate investigation by a Valencia court. Badenas told us that the PSOE (Spain’s governing Socialist party, which is also the opposition on the Valencia City Council) intensified the pressure by expanding the complaint to include previous tweets made by Herrero in 2020 and 2022, which Badenas says were taken out of context.
He described it as “a fully-fledged witch hunt, without the presumption of innocence, and with the sole purpose of undermining the reputation of a person for her ideas.”
VOX members say these complaints are intended to destabilise the right-wing coalition governing the city of Valencia, formed by VOX and the centre-right Partido Popular (PP).
The situation, Badenas noted, further intensified in July after a murder in Valencia. Several news outlets, including national TV channels Tele 5 and Antena 3, reported that eyewitnesses said the culprit was an Algerian immigrant. This later turned out not to be the case. However, Badenas, using the widely reported information at the time, publicly commented on the incident, saying the murder would not have happened had the suspect not entered Spain. The PSOE filed a second hate crime complaint against him, arguing that his statement was discriminatory.
Badenas says that legal experts in hate crime have voiced doubt over whether Herrero’s and his statements meet the necessary criteria for hate crime charges. However, he expressed frustration that the prosecutor’s office has continued its investigations, which he argues the opposition parties have exploited to publicly label VOX council members as “racists,” “xenophobes,” and “fascists.”
All this is part of an ideological persecution that uses hate crime laws as tools. These laws were added to the Spanish Penal Code, as well as in other countries, to limit the freedom of expression of those who disagree with woke or far-left views.
In response, Badenas and Herrero are considering filing their own complaints with the prosecutor’s office, alleging defamation by Compromís and PSOE during council meetings. Badenas also questioned the prosecutor’s impartiality, saying the proceedings “seem oddly timed and advantageous for PSOE and Compromís.”
As the political struggle within Valencia’s City Council intensifies, Badenas contends that the ongoing investigations continue to deepen divisions between the city’s political factions, with each side accusing the other of using legal avenues to achieve partisan ends.