The latest political crisis of Vox in Cantabria, which has led to the departure of its former spokesperson Cristóbal Palacio from the far-right parliamentary group after being sanctioned for two years of militancy for not attending plenary sessions and commissions, has once again brought transfuguism to Parliament of Cantabria, which for the third consecutive term must welcome into its chamber a non-attached deputy, who maintains his record despite abandoning the party for which he stood for election.
Up to four parliamentarians have followed the same path in just seven years: slamming the door on the acronyms with which they obtained a record in the old San Rafael Hospital, declaring themselves “not attached” and abandoning their parliamentary group, but retaining their position and , with him, all the privileges and the corresponding salary of a deputy. Furthermore, in practically all cases there was a common component, and that is that the confrontations with their fellow soldiers were due to internal battles for organic power and not to strictly political or ideological decisions.
Thus, Ciudadanos on two occasions, Podemos later and now Vox have recently faced this flight of deputies and the loss of their legitimate representatives in Cantabria, forcing the Autonomous Chamber to adapt its internal operating rules and modify its regulations. organic process in the middle of the session to respond to this circumstance, in some cases with great controversy because the non-attached deputies in turn caused the dissolution of the parliamentary groups in which they were integrated, recalling more turbulent stages such as those experienced in the 90s during the mandates of former president Juan Hormaechea.
Cataract of turncoats
The arrival of the new emerging parties in the Parliament of Cantabria in the 2015–2019 legislature ended a period of certain political placidity in the Chamber, and the first deputy who broke with his party and became a turncoat was Juan Ramón Carrancio, former coordinator of Ciudadanos, who left the orange formation in June 2017 along with “two-thirds of the militancy” after Albert Rivera’s hand-picked appointment from Madrid of the actor and comedian Félix Álvarez – popularly known as Felisuco – as the party’s highest representative in the autonomous community.
At that time, Ciudadanos had two representatives in the Parliament of Cantabria within the Mixed Group – as it did not reach the minimum number of deputies to have its own group – and Carrancio’s departure was very controversial because his vote even served on some occasions throughout the legislature so that the PRC-PSOE Government chaired by the regionalist Miguel Ángel Revilla carried out the budgets, despite recognizing that the former Orange deputy was “a textbook turncoat.” Carrancio himself was accused of using the resources that corresponded to him as a parliamentarian to set up a new political formation, OLA Cantabria, with which he participated as the head of the list in the regional elections in the following call, although with a very poor result that did not allowed him to repeat the position.
Ciudadanos also suffered transfuguism in its ranks last term, when the regional representative Marta García announced on social networks her resignation as a member of the orange formation in May 2022, attributing this decision to the vote of her party in the Senate in a proposal related to the protection of the wolf, and making it clear that he was not going to deliver the minutes and that he would remain in the regional Parliament until the end of the legislature. In fact, she continued to occupy a seat in the Chamber as a non-attached deputy, ignoring the requests for resignation from those who until then had been her colleagues in the acronym, and causing the dissolution of the parliamentary group of Ciudadanos, which was left without the minimum number of representatives to retain it.
In the case of Podemos, its only term in the Cantabrian Chamber was also surrounded by controversy due to the constant confrontation between its three deputies, and even ended with a complaint for workplace harassment in court. In fact, this was the reason for the breakup of the former parliamentary spokesperson, Verónica Ordóñez, who became non-affiliated after the differences she had with José Ramón Blanco and Alberto Bolado, who ended up in the mixed group and distanced from the purple formation. After accumulating two managers, three different general secretaries and judicially paralyzed primaries in just four years, Podemos lost its representation in the Parliament of Cantabria and has had no chance of recovering it in the following elections.
The last person to join this list of turncoat deputies has been Cristóbal Palacio, who had an open confrontation with his party since he was relegated from the head of the Vox list in the regional elections in Cantabria and lost the spokesperson for his parliamentary group in favor of Leticia Díaz. After just 15 months of the legislature, in which the organic battle has intensified, with sanctions, accusations of espionage among the deputies themselves and dismissals due to workplace harassment, Palacio has slammed the door justifying his departure in the lack of internal democracy in the formation of the extreme right and preserving its record. If there are no more changes in the short term, Vox maintains three deputies who can be key throughout the legislature, because they can guarantee an alternative majority to the PP Government.
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