Rabat – Carlos Verdejo, an MP and Spain’s far-right party Vox’ spokesman in Ceuta, sparked outrage this week for his racist and xenophobic tweet targeting a muslim collegue, MP Fatima Hamid.
A lawyer by training, Fatima Hamid founded her own party – Movement for Dignity and Citizenship (MDyC) – six months ago. The party won three seats in the general Assembly of Ceuta, making Hamid the first Muslim woman to run at the head of an electoral ticket in Spain.
But Verdejo suggested in a tweet on Monday that Hamid should be deported to Morocco.
The exchange between the two MPs started after Hamid appeared to take issue with Vox’s unapologetically racist and nativist platform.
A vocal advocate of human rights and social inclusion in Ceuta, Hamid called for standing up to Vox’s normalization of xenophobia and Islamophobia.
Ahead of Vox leader Santiago Abascal’s trip to Ceuta, she suggested that the far-right politician was not welcome in the city. “What if we declared Santiago Abascal persona non grata,” Hamid tweeted.
“What if we deported you to Morocco?” Carlos Verdejo responded, causing great indignation and an outpouring of solidarity with Fatima Hamid.
For many, Verdejo’s response was a worrying reminder that a sizable section of the Spanish political class still links the Muslim population of Ceuta to Morocco.
Hamid told reporters on Tuesday that Carlos Verdejo’s response to her tweet is “the tweet of unreason, of someone who has no valid arguments and who’s trying to offend, but does not succeed.”
For her, Abascal’s nativist platform and Verdejo’s xenophobic statements are “evidence” of Vox’s “ignorance and ridiculousness.”
Vox supporters, she argued, are “people who have such an authoritarian way of thinking, and who abide by the concept of fascism, they believe that all of us who are different should be expelled.”
While many locals were outraged by the Vox spokesperson’s comment, his Monday’s tweet is far from an isolated incident.
Vox has long thrived on minority stigmatization and revels in questioning Spanish Muslims’ loyalty to Spain.
Following recent tensions between Morocco and Spain, many far- right politicians jumped on what they saw as an opportunity to use the diplomatic crisis to incite hate and division.
