Born to a family of noble origin in Madrid, he studied at the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid before obtaining an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in the suburbs of Chicago, USA. He also appears to have served in the armed forces of Spain, having deployed to one of the Middle Eastern conflicts. During his time in the United States, he worked for McKinsey & Company as a summer associate, as well as spending a year working for a Florida-based media company. After returning to Spain, he worked primarily in real estate, spending some time in Warsaw, Poland, buying up office properties after it entered the EU. He was an occasional collaborator with Grupo Intereconomía media properties, an organization chaired by Julio Ariza, a former Partido Popular (PP) parliamentarian in Catalonia, known for his ultra-conservative stances and opposition to abortion.
Ivan Espinosa was one of the founders of VOX, acting as the Secretary-General during the first two years of the party’s existence. He later became responsible for the party’s international affairs section, having connections with the Floridian Hispanic community, having met with the mayor of Miami Florida in 2016 with his wife. He has also campaigned on behalf of Ilena Garcia, Trump’s former Communications Director for Latino outreach who went on to serve as the deputy spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security. She went on to barely win the election during which Ivan campaigned on her behalf, in part because a candidate sharing the same name as the Democratic incumbent was paid 40k to appear on the ballot. But beyond an alleged visit in 2017 where he met with Trump administration officials , he did not have strong ties to Washington DC. He did participate in an electoral observation mission during the 2018 Colombian elections , and met with the Guatemalan president in November of 2018, but appears to have been struggling to build a significant network of Vox contacts abroad.
Rafael Bardaji joining VOX in 2018 is what finally allowed the party to significantly expand its international networks. As an English speaker who had previously studied in the United States, Ivan Espinosa became one of the point people for visits to the United States, attending CPAC in 2019. He was also with Abascal when they met congressmen Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, and Mario Díaz-Balart. They also met with the Heritage Foundation, the International Republican Institute and the American Conservative Union. They also met with representatives of the Israel lobby in DC , as well as convincing Eduardo Bolsonaro to sign on to the Madrid charter. He continued to be a primary link between Vox and the Republican party, returning to speak at right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.
After being elected to the Spanish Congress in 2019, Ivan Espinosa was appointed as a spokesperson for VOX. During his time in Congress, he has said that he is committed to fighting “gender ideology” claiming it makes men second-class citizens. He has also called for making “Marxist” and “separatist” parties illegal . After disappointing results during the July 23, 2023 general election in Spain, Ivan Espinosa left politics, claiming that the Falangist wing of the party had taken total control of the party. There was speculation that he might launch a party to contest the 2024 European elections to represent the purged neoliberal wing of VOX in the mold of Milei , although this is something that he has officially denied.
