Simon Hunter
THE HEADQUARTERS in Barcelona of Spain’s far-right political party Vox had to be evacuated on Thursday, after a bomb threat was made via telephone. According to press reports, however, the incident turned out to be a false alarm.
First thing in the morning a caller claimed to have left an explosive device by the premises, which are located in Camp street in the Catalan capital, according to Spanish daily ABC.
The apparent hoaxster also stated that the bomb would go off in 30 minutes.
In a statement, Vox reported that the caller had voiced insults and threats against the party, which is the third-largest in Spain’s Congress of Deputies after the conservative Popular Party and the Socialist Party.
“You are going to explode in half an hour,” Vox reported the caller as having said. “You are sons-of-bitches.”
The Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, deployed the Tedax explosives group as well as a canine team.
They did not, however, locate any devices and by midday the incident was being treated as a hoax.
The general secretary of the party, Ignacio Garriga, was forced to cancel a meeting that he had scheduled in the headquarters on Thursday.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter), he said: “We cannot allow political violence and bomb threats to become the norm. They are trying to terrorise us so that we cease our political activity, but they will never manage it.”
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