The ups and downs that the far-right party Vox has been going through for weeks within its parliamentary group in the Balearic Islands has had a new chapter this Thursday with the departure of the Menorcan deputy Xisco Cardona from the party to become a non-attached deputy. “I have shown loyalty to the party by fulfilling everything that the party has asked me to fulfill, which was nothing other than respecting the investiture agreement. Seeing myself in this loyalty, I have been paid with disloyalty,” Cardona said this Thursday at the doors of the regional Parliament. Cardona was in favor of supporting the spending ceiling proposed by the PP in the regional Parliament to begin processing the budgets and, according to him, they had “very precise and very concrete instructions” from the national leadership to do so. Until an internal rebellion of several deputies, in a numerical majority, forced the entire parliamentary group, of eight members, to vote against and block the regional accounts, opening a crisis with their PP partners. “My personal dignity and that of my family is above all this farce,” he said.
With the departure of Cardona, Vox is left with seven deputies in the Balearic Chamber and a weaker position when negotiating with the PP, although it does not change the game of parliamentary majorities, since the formation led by the conservative Marga Prohens would need four more deputies to have an absolute majority. The PP governs in the Balearic Islands after reaching a legislative agreement with Vox that contemplates the application of 110 measures and that includes a good part of the postulates of the ultra formation, which agreed to support the popular in their parliamentary initiatives but without having government responsibilities. . Generic measures that, as in the case of the implementation of free choice of language, do not have a specific development in the agreement.
The crisis within Vox Baleares broke out during the plenary session of the Autonomous Chamber on October 17 with the debate of a non-law proposal in which they proposed the application of the free choice of language in the educational system for children and adolescents. primary during the next academic year and for all educational stages in 2025. The PP abstained during the vote, alleging that its opposition to giving the green light to the proposal did not violate the government agreement, where there is a commitment to the implementation of the free choice of language throughout the legislature, but without establishing a specific calendar. The matter remained a reproach by the Vox deputies to their partners until hours later the approval of the spending ceiling for the 2023 Community Budget was debated in the autonomous chamber, an essential prior step to be able to prepare the draft of the accounts. The surprise for the PP was the vote against its allies, who in the mouth of the representative Patricia de Las Heras reproached them for having had the opportunity to vote in favor of the proposition on the free choice of language.
The surprise was also taken by some of Vox’s own deputies who, as Cardona explained, were forced to vote against the spending ceiling despite orders from the leadership in Madrid. That afternoon, before the vote, an internal rebellion arose among the group of Vox deputies, among whom was the parliamentary spokesperson Idoia Ribas, to block the PP accounts. A group of deputies that was the majority compared to those who wanted to listen to the national leadership. “We had instructions to impose free choice of language, but as stated in the government agreement signed between PP and Vox. We had very precise and very specific instructions to approve this spending ceiling, just as we knew that the implementation of the free choice of language had to be progressive, before the end of the legislature,” Cardona explained.
As the hours passed, it became clear that the dissidents of the internal rebellion were not going to emerge unscathed. After winning the hardline of the deputies in the vote, the consequences for the wayward Cardona were not long in coming and the next day he was relieved of his position as deputy speaker in Parliament and replaced by the deputy Sergio Rodríguez, close to Ribas and supporter to block the PP spending ceiling proposal. According to Cardona, the party publicly justified it by saying that he had spoken with deputies from other parties in the Autonomous Chamber, including the current President of the Government, Marga Prohens. “In the exercise of my right to political representation, safeguarded in the Constitution, any member of the legislative branch, at the headquarters of the legislative branch, speaks with any other deputy without having to have authorization to do so,” Cardona stressed. A couple of days later, his cornering was also visible physically, as Vox reorganized the seats in the parliamentary group and relegated Cardona to a corner of the chamber.
Meanwhile, the PP was stunned by the crisis of its government partner, with the budgets up in the air and enduring the harsh reproaches of its deputies, who last Tuesday in plenary session accused the Prohens Government again and again of failing to comply with the agreement of the legislature and being “afraid of the pro-independence unions” when applying the measure. Cardona today defended the agreement signed with the PP and insisted that not everything can be done in 24 hours. “We all have the experience of Integrated Language Treatment promoted by José Ramón Bauzá, how it was tried to be implemented in 24 hours and it was a real failure. But it seems that some are in too much of a hurry and it has led us to an extreme situation that I am not willing to face.”
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Although Vox has repeatedly denied the existence of a crisis these days, last week, just one day after the internal rebellion and the clash with the PP, the party announced the visit of the general secretary Ignacio Garriga, who finally He suspended the meeting with the deputies of the Balearic Islands, alleging a flight cancellation. A visit that had the objective of asking for explanations for having voted against the party’s guidelines. Finally, Garriga met this Wednesday in Barcelona with the parliamentary spokesperson Idoia Ribas and with two other deputies to discuss the situation, in a meeting in which the national leadership chose to close ranks with the hard wing, who are the majority and now have the endorsement of Madrid to maintain its opposition to the Prohens Government until an agreement is reached on the application of free choice of language.
“I have felt helpless by the national leadership, the only thing I have done was follow the party’s guidelines,” Cardona said this morning. Sources close to Vox maintain that the national leadership has “totally” lost control over the Balearic deputies, who are free.
The maneuver of the general direction left Cardona in the minority, although he maintains that there are members of the parliamentary group who think like him. “I can’t tell you if anyone else will follow my path, that’s for them to decide,” he said. Yesterday afternoon, Vox Baleares sent a call to attend a press conference by the Menorcan deputy, although the party assured that they had not sent it. The chapter closed early in the morning with the announcement of the deputy’s departure and the question of whether, in the future, he will end up joining the ranks of the PP.
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