Protagonists of a great jump in the regionals on Sunday in Castilla y León, the extreme right party Vox demands to enter the regional governmentan unprecedented event that could alter the political board in Spain, less than two years before the elections scheduled for early 2024 at the latest.
“Vox has the right and the duty to form a government,” the national leader of the ultra-nationalist formation, Santiago Abascal, solemnly sentenced on Sunday night. The voters “have spoken and we demand respect for the verdict of the sovereign people,” he continued.
The Popular Party (PP, conservatives) won the early elections, with 31.4 percent of the votes, but he failed in his attempt to obtain a sufficient majority to govern alone.
With 31 of the 81 seats in the regional Parliament, the PP depends on Vox, which went from 1 to 13 seats by obtaining 17.6 percent of the vote, if it wants to retain power in this fief it has run for 35 years. The Socialists of the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezwere in second position with 30% of the votes and 28 seats.
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The current regional president of Castilla y León, the conservative Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, had called early elections on Sunday after breaking with his centrist allies from Ciudadanos, hoping to strengthen his majority in the regional parliament. “The PP has won the elections but has lost its position, remaining in the hands of Vox,” summarized the political scientist Cristina Monge.
The PP has no choice but to give space to its main rival within the right
Castilla y León could precisely serve as a “laboratory” for Vox, which promotes the repeal of laws against sexist violence or rejects measures to rehabilitate victims of the Franco dictatorship, in the words of Paloma Román, professor of Political Science at the Complutense University of Madrid.
“The goal is to have a PP government” in Castilla y León because the “coalition governments have not brought more stability, quite the opposite,” said the number 2 of the PP at the national level, Teodoro García Egea.
Associating with Vox could become a problem for the PP since it would not allow it “to forge alliances with moderate nationalist parties,” both at the regional and national levels, Pablo Simón said.
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And for Paloma Román, an eventual regional government of PP and Vox could have the effect that the voters themselves apply a “sanitary cordon” against the extreme right, when they see that their program begins to be applied.
Marginal up to that point, Vox generated a political earthquake in 2018 when it entered with force in the Parliament of Andalusia (south), historical bastion of the left and the most populated region of the country.
It was the first time since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy that a far-right party had won seats in a regional parliament.
But in Andalusia and the Madrid region, Vox is content to support the regional governments of the PP without being part of them. At the national level, Vox became the third political force in the Spanish Parliament in the 2019 legislative elections, with 52 of the 350 deputies.
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Recent polls show that it continues to rise and outline the possibility that in the next legislative elections PP and Vox will add an absolute majority that will allow them to form a government.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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