The leadership of Vox, chaired by Santiago Abascal, has decided to formalize this Thursday the breaking of the government pacts signed with the PP once it has verified that its partners have agreed to host in those territories a quota of unaccompanied minor immigrants, a measure that the far-right party flatly rejects. Vox will from now on not give parliamentary support to the PP governments and its officials will resign in the coming days.
Abascal began his appearance by saying that today’s decision is “one of the most important in his political history,” and he harshly criticized Alberto Núñez Feijóo for his pacts with “the autocrat,” in reference to his agreements with Pedro Sánchez. “Nobody has voted for Vox, and I would dare say that they have not voted for the PP either, so that the invasion of illegal immigration and ‘menas’ continues,” he said.
“The National Executive Committee of Vox has noted that the regional agreements have been broken as a result of Mr. Feijóo’s aggression, and therefore it has agreed to withdraw parliamentary support for the governments of Extremadura, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, the Valencian Community, Castile and Leon and Murcia. The vice-presidents of these governments will announce their resignation and Vox will join the opposition, as loyal as it is forceful, just like in the rest of Spain,” Abascal concluded in a speech lasting just five minutes and without questions.
Abascal has delayed his appearance by almost an hour and a half due to the heated internal debate that arose during the meeting of the National Executive Committee, held at the headquarters of the far-right party to make “an institutional declaration” and announce the decision that, he said, was ultimately supported by all the territorial leaders.
This morning, upon his arrival at the Plenary Session of Congress, Abascal confirmed his decision to break these agreements: “I could not go out on the street if I do not keep my word. If I cannot go out on the street, I would cease to be president of Vox,” he said. Sources from the far-right party regret the decision but assure that the PP “has left them no other choice.”
The anger of the Vox leadership with Feijóo is shared as they consider that he has been “defrauding” his voters: “The PP has agreed to courts with the PSOE, has reached agreements in Brussels and in the CCAA, and now they have blown up the government pacts, voluntarily accepting 400 unaccompanied minors,” Abascal lamented. “To defraud, plunder, and endanger the Spanish people, they cannot count on us,” he stressed again and again.
The first to stage the divorce were the two Vox councillors in the Region of Murcia, the vice-president José Ángel Antelo and the Minister of Public Works, José Manuel Pancorbo, who this Thursday decided to stand up the president of the regional government, Fernando López Miras, of the PP, and did not attend the meeting of the Government Council, as reported by Cadena SER and confirmed by elDiario.es. This is the first move by the far-right party after threatening Feijóo’s party with breaking the agreements if they agreed with the PSOE on the distribution of migrant minors.
In Aragon, the two Vox members of the regional government, the vice president, Alejandro Nolasco, and the Minister of Agriculture, Ángel Sampe, also decided to cancel the official events they had scheduled for this Thursday.
In Castilla y León, the vice president of the Junta, Juan García-Gallardo, warned on Wednesday that he was willing to resign rather than “lose his honour”. In addition to him, the Executive includes Mariano Veganzones Díez, Minister of Industry, Trade and Employment; Gerardo Dueñas, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development; and Gonzalo Santonja, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sport.
All the PP’s appeals for Vox not to carry out its threats have been unsuccessful. The deputy secretary of regional policy for the PP, Elías Bendodo, revealed on Thursday morning that until then “no one from the Vox leadership had contacted the PP leadership” to discuss the future of the pacts after the Youth and Childhood sector conference held yesterday to also discuss the reform of the Immigration Law. “Vox will have to decide what it wants to be, whether a government party or a party to protest,” Bendodo said in statements to the media in Congress. In addition, he said he was “proud” of the unanimous decision of the regional presidents of his party to continue taking in unaccompanied minors, despite the fact that the PP has blocked the distribution of thousands of these children taken in by the Canary Islands and has not yet revealed whether it will support the reform of the law to make the agreements reached at the sector conferences binding.
It remains to be seen whether Abascal’s drastic decision will not trigger a new internal crisis in the party. In some regional parliaments this morning, the discontent of some councillors who, having left their posts, have no other income, given that the regime of incompatibilities in Vox is strict, was palpable. In informal conversations with journalists, the majority confessed that they were happy to govern with the PP.
Another possibility now looming in the air is whether any of the PP barons who are going to stop governing with Vox will decide to call early elections in their autonomous regions.
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