The Popular Party and Vox make their marriage official today in Valencia, the main showcase for the changes that are taking place in Spanish politics. This afternoon the investiture of the Alicante lawyer Carlos Mazón Guixot will take place as the new president of the Generalitat Valenciana, with the support of the extreme right. The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has decided to celebrate the event in style with a rally that will take place at sunset in the recreational area of ??the port of Valencia. Vox wants to make it clear that the change bears his stamp.
The Valencian Community is a key part of the current electoral cycle. It is key due to its demographic weight –the fourth most populous community (4.9 million inhabitants), after Madrid (6.6), Catalonia (7.5) and Andalusia (8.4)–, due to its geographical position in the center of the Mediterranean arc, an area of ??economic expansion, and for its political weight on the Spanish territorial map. Valencia settles.
“The political future of Spain is going to be settled in the Valencian Community”, headlined La Vanguardia on April 9, seven weeks before the local and regional elections on May 28. “The turbulence generated around Sumar can leave the left in a minority,” added the subtitle. Indeed, the demobilization of the left wing of the coalition that governed the Generalitat Valenciana was the determining factor of its defeat.
The PSPV-PSOE advanced, but Unides Podem lost 59% of the votes obtained in 2019, being left out of the Corts Valencianas due to the impossibility of exceeding the 5% threshold. The Valencian coalition Compromís also fell back, although less, with a decrease of 19%.
The Spanish national sphere, with its narrative headquarters in Madrid, clearly prevailed over the regional sphere. The government that had managed to attract to the Valencian Community one of the largest industrial investments in recent years (the gigafactory of the Volkswagen group in Sagunt) was defeated by bottom currents. Here is a perfect x-ray of the political moment in Spain.
It was also in the Valencian Community where a pact between PP and Vox was first forged after 28-M. Mazón secretly negotiated it to prevent his investiture from being bogged down by the early general elections by Pedro Sánchez. Lightning negotiation before the waters of the Albufera were more murky, with staging in the hands of Vox, which generated great irritation in the leadership of the Popular Party. There were weeks of certain anxiety on Calle Génova in Madrid, until Alberto Núñez Feijóo rescued an old Spanish saying: “What’s done, chest.”
The PP-Vox pact has been reproduced in dozens of Valencian town halls, from which significant news is beginning to arrive. Yesterday, the Burriana City Council (Castellón) decided to cancel its subscription to various Catalan-language publications, including the children’s magazine Cavall Fort. The linguistic issue is on the way to becoming aroused again in the Valencian Community, under pressure from the extreme right.
In the 1990s, under equally tense circumstances, the Valencian President Eduardo Zaplana and the Catalan President Jordi Pujol discreetly agreed on a fundamental issue: the new Valencian Academy of Language, promoted by the PP, would respect the Castelló Norms of 1932, norms for the unification of the Valencian orthography in accordance with the norms of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. In a few words, the unity of Catalan/Valencian. A capital question for the survival of the language, as can be understood very well in a Spain that has known how to preserve the normative unity of the Castilian language in Latin America.
Yesterday, the new Balearic government decided that knowledge of Catalan is no longer a requirement to obtain a position as a doctor in public health.
Old tensions are revived and some destabilization strategies are repeated. Núñez Feijóo returned yesterday to question the neatness of voting by mail, encouraging postmen to distribute all the votes “despite their bosses.” They go with everything. A very calculated statement to sow suspicion, made by the man who presided over the Post Office service between 2000 and 2003. The Post Office issued an official note yesterday, vindicating the neatness of its management and the honor of all its employees.
