The entry into the local government of the Valencia City Council has not tempered the desire for prominence of the local spokesperson for Vox and now second deputy mayor, Juanma Badenas. “You need to constantly generate content and controversies,” they emphasize in the local PP, which recognizes that their partner’s high-sounding statements make them uncomfortable; especially in issues linked to women or gender violence.
In fact, yesterday, the spokesperson for the municipal government, Juan Carlos Caballero (PP), had to stop his fellow executive and qualify his previous statements from the weekend. During the long weekend, the spokesperson for Santiago Abascal’s party had announced that the City Council was going to cancel an event titled “Leaders” due to its high cost. Minutes later, Vox sources corrected themselves and emphasized that the event that was canceled was the “Women and Leadership” event scheduled for December 15.
Yesterday, the local government spokesperson indicated that the date was postponed, but not the event itself, with the aim of “adjusting the cost and agreeing with the board” on a new calendar. “We are not against an act on women entrepreneurs and female leadership, on the contrary; What we do see as convenient is to reduce its cost,” María José Catalá’s government team explained to La Vanguardia.
The same sources stressed the need to save “the concept” and the idea of ??promoting female leadership among the business class. The PP, they indicated, “cannot let itself be dragged by Vox on these issues.” Along these lines, they recalled “the high price that was paid in the general elections” precisely when an important part of the women turned their backs on the popular parties after the first regional agreements with Vox were finalized. In the ranks of Catalá they are aware of the “enormous wear and tear” that these types of actions by their partners can generate.
“On issues such as the battle against Catalanism, PP and Vox can agree more or less, but in the defense of women, they cannot give in.”
Furthermore, the City Council points out that Badenas’ idea of ??suppressing the act was very complicated to execute since the City Council does not have a majority in the board of trustees that organized the activity.
The example of yesterday’s rectification is one more. In the local PP they recognize the discomfort caused by Badenas’ intention to step into all the puddles in an attempt to not lose that prominence that he achieved in the first months of the legislature by tightening the screws on the mayor, María José Catalá, from the opposition. It is evident that both do not quite trust each other and that complicates the work of government.
Badenas is a quite different profile from that of the vice president and Minister of Culture, Vicente Barrera, who tries to spend little time in the media. In fact, his relationship with the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, is much more cordial, and Barrera does not put the head of the Consell in so much trouble.
A few days ago, in an interview, Barrera himself acknowledged that he was offered to be the Vox candidate for mayor of Valencia, but he rejected it. Thus, Badenas was not the first choice of the far-right formation, and some still do not understand why he was chosen. His loose verse profile does not quite fit with such a presidential and centralized party.
There are many in Vox who do not quite get along with his way of acting, at a time when internal tensions within Abascal’s party are beginning to fester, as already happened after the election of the new provincial executive, where the new president He made a strong renovation and left out his predecessor in office, José María Llanos, and the current Minister of Agriculture, José Luis Aguirre.