The PP avoids declaring the regional governments with Vox broken and awaits Abascal’s decision

The five regional governments of the PP and Vox are on the verge of bankruptcy. The leader of the far right has called his leadership and regional leaders this afternoon to decide whether or not to break the executives, after the minimum agreement reached yesterday with the central government to accommodate less than 400 migrant minors of the thousands housed in the Canary Islands. The PP maintains the agreements signed a year ago in force, despite the accusations launched by Abascal himself, and they avoid declaring the governments broken.

“I don’t understand what they are trying to achieve, when we are talking about an exercise of solidarity of all Spaniards with a very relevant and critical part like the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands are Spain and the Canarians are Spanish, they deserve the solidarity of everyone,” said the national spokesman for the PP, Borja Sémper, in an early morning interview on RNE.

Sémper has assured that, after Abascal’s party has opted to join the group led by the pro-Russian Viktor Orbán in the European Parliament, “Vox has gone down a path that makes clear where it is located, what it wants to represent” and that “the PP does not represent it.”

Despite Vox’s alleged lack of “solidarity” and its accusations against the PP and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the spokesperson has defended that the agreements signed with the extreme right after the elections of May 2023 “offer stability” and has reiterated his “commitment to those governments” that “is limited to what was agreed.” A relevant detail because not all the documents sealed a year ago refer to immigration policy, much less to the specific detail of the reception of minors.

Sémper was the first PP leader to appear in the media after the statement released last night by Vox, which accuses the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of having “forced” the PP regional presidents to vote in favour of the distribution of minors. An allegation that was denied by the deputy secretary of regional policy, Elías Bendodo, in statements to the media in Congress.

The leader from Malaga has maintained that “no one” from the national leadership has contacted the PP executive in recent days, not even today, and has left the responsibility of whether or not to leave the governments in Vox’s hands: “Vox will have to answer for its actions, and will have to decide whether it wants to be a governing party or a party to protest.”

The secretary general, Cuca Gamarra, has also avoided declaring the government agreements broken, despite the fact that this Thursday the Vox councillors in Murcia have stood up the president, Fernando López Miras, in the usual Thursday meeting of the executive.

“Governments that work”

“Whether they are going to break or not should be asked to Vox. Only Santiago Abascal and his team know this. First they would have to communicate it to their own leaders in the coalition governments,” Gamarra said. Indeed, yesterday, Vox officials in the autonomous governments already declared that the decision to break or not in each community is up to the national leadership and, specifically, to its leader.

Gamarra has acknowledged that what was agreed yesterday in Tenerife responds to “a minimum principle of solidarity” since the regions are going to take in “between ten and 30 minors” each. “This cannot be the reason and they will have to give the appropriate explanations,” he added in an interview on Antena 3.

Feijóo’s number two has defended that the executives with Vox are “Governments that work, that are giving stability to 11 million Spaniards.” “Vox is being absolutely irresponsible just by proposing a challenge of this nature, when what I think it wants is to break up for other reasons,” she pointed out.

The parliamentary spokesman for the PP, Miguel Tellado, has joined his colleagues in maintaining that “Vox is the one that has to explain its decisions”. “But I believe that neither its officials nor its voters understand them,” he said in statements to the media in Congress. “That is the reality of the whole situation. Yesterday Vox defended the same position as Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña and in today’s plenary session they are going to vote with Podemos. I think they have a serious problem in positioning themselves,” he concluded.