Hours after former Spanish politician of the right, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, was shot in the face by an unidentified gunman in a Madrid street, the lines of investigation are beginning to be clarified: Vidal-Quadras, the 78-year-old former president of the People's Party in Catalonia, and later, president of Vox, has told the police that his attack could be related to his links with the opposition to the Iranian regime, according to police sources cited by radio station Cadena SER. The right-wing politician was rushed to the Gregorio Marañón University Hospital after being shot in the jaw area. He was conscious until his entry into the operating room. According to the latest medical report, Vidal-Quadras has a double mandibular fracture and will undergo surgery. He is in a stable condition and his injury is not life-threatening, they added from the hospital.
The attack took place at 1:30pm in Calle Núñez de Balboa, in Madrid's Salamanca neighbourhood. An eye witness reported that the bullet "entered through his cheek and exited through his neck". The assailant fled on a motorcycle and the police continue with the investigation to find out the authorship of the attempted murder. The broad-daylight attack on a former right-wing politician in Madrid, in a city whose political atmosphere is rarified as the PSOE goes forward in its attempt to form a new Spanish government, set off all the alarms.
The leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, has condemned the attempted assassination of Vidal-Quadras on her social media accounts this Thursday and directly signalled the Iranian regime as responsible. "The Iranian Resistance sees Iran's ruling religious fascism as the first suspect accused in this case, as professor Vidal Quadras has devoted an important part of his life to fighting against it," she wrote.
Vidal-Quadras's relationship with the Iranian opposition
Vidal-Quadras, president of the People's Party in Catalonia from 1991 to 1996, was also an MEP for the PP and a vice-president of the European Parliament between 1999 and 2014. In Brussels, Vidal-Quadras came into contact for the first time with the cause of the Iranian opposition. He himself explained, as quoted by El Mundo, that in the European Parliament the Iranian opposition movement was a recurrent topic and had a lot of support among MEPs. Vidal-Quadras committed himself to this cause and since then he has been one of the great allies of the Iranian opposition, doing lobbying work in Brussels and Paris and being an ambassador for the cause around the world. The ex-Catalonia leader of the PP, and briefly president of far-right Vox in 2014, told the investigating police of his deep relationship with Iranian exile and indicated that he had "no other enemies".
In fact, the Iranian opposition group NCRI financed 80% of Vox's campaign for the 2014 European elections, the Spanish political party admitted in 2020. The group has emphasized that in the last quarter of a century in which they have been in relation to him, Vidal-Quadras "has always supported the resistance of the Iranian people for freedom and human rights".
Police suspect a "hit man"
As of Thursday afternoon, Spanish National Police were pursuing one line of investigation in particular: they suspect that a hit man, a hired gunman, tried to execute Alejo Vidral-Quadras in the middle of the street in Madrid. They believe that the attack was "planned" by a professional, who, they suspect, was commissioned by a third party. The modus operandi, say the specialists, is similar to that used by hit men from South America. The man who opened fire on the ex-politician approached him head-on, and then left and got on a motorcycle that was waiting for him - without revealing his face at any time - according to some eye witnesses who spoke to the police.