Carlos Mazón (Alicante, 1974) has been elected a moment ago as the new president of the Generalitat Valenciana with the votes in favor of the PP and Vox (53 votes in favor) and with the opposition of the PSPV and Compromís (46). The pact with the extreme right allows the popular to recover the presidency that Alberto Fabra lost in 2015 due to the victory of the left, which put an end to twenty years of conservative executives in the Valencian Community. Thus begins a new political cycle after the results of the past 28-M that put an end to the two legislatures with a left-wing government chaired by Ximo Puig and known as the Botànic executive.
The new Valencian president, who until yesterday was president of the Alicante Provincial Council, has managed to exemplify in this autonomy the first great pact with Vox after the regional elections in May (there was a first agreement in Castilla y León in 2022), a formation that He holds the presidency of the Valencian Parliament and will have a vice-presidency in the new executive that will also manage Culture, in the hands of the former bullfighter Vicente Barrera, Agriculture and Justice. This Thursday, in the investiture debate, Mazón has defended the figure of what will be his number two and has assured that he knows him well and has been convinced that he “will create a free culture and for all”.
Despite this, in the overall of his speech, Mazón has not offered nods to the Vox program today, although he has defended the pact with the extreme right “due to the refusal of the PSPV to abstain.” In order to distance himself from the extreme right, he has prioritized his government’s action in the fight “against sexist violence” and has announced that Equality will be located in a Vice-Presidency of the Valencian executive (the same rank that it currently has in the Government of the Botànic). .
In this sense, in his speech, Mazón has indicated that “in our community we have to repudiate any type of violence that occurs in any workplace, sexist, intra-family, gender or sexual identity, racial and in any of its forms” . In a speech in which he has combined Valencian and Spanish, the PP candidate has rejected the fact that “nobody can feel threatened by choosing who they love or by being born where they were born”.
Mazón has also announced a Law on Identity Signs in which, among other measures, aid or subsidies to those entities that “want to impose the Catalan Countries on us” will be eliminated. In addition, he has announced, in terms of Education, that he wants parents “to be able to choose the center and the language” in which they want their children to be educated. And he has shown his determination to “remove ideology from the classroom.”
In reply, the acting president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, has taken the floor in the investiture debate to offer his substitute, Carlos Mazón, up to five pacts on consensus that go beyond acronyms in matters such as equality, democratic quality , energy, the Welfare State, culture and defense of the Valencian.
A glove that the PP candidate for the Presidency has picked up (with the nuance that he will promote “the Valencian if he is not Catalan”) and to which he has added a sixth for demanding a change in the regional financing system and resolving, from the scientific rigor, the problem of water. Puig has joined both.
The debate between the two, despite the clear differences in the model -in tax matters, for example- and the occasional squabble, has taken place in an atmosphere of respect and cordiality. Puig has indicated that when Mazón needs him he will have him by his side and the future president of the Generalitat has applauded the words and has thanked “the tone used”.
For his part, the Ombudsman for Compromís, Joan Baldoví, has been more forceful and has promised a belligerent opposition so that the “infamous” agreement with Vox “chokes” the PP. The spokesman for the Valencian coalition has regretted that Mazón appoints “someone who is blessing the holy inquisition” as vice president and head of Culture, in reference to Vicente Barrera’s support for the decision taken by the Burriana City Council to eliminate the subscription to magazine for his alleged Catalanism.
Meanwhile, the Vox trustee in Les Corts, Ana Vega, has assured that the new Valencian government will protect “the victims of any type of domestic violence equally”. Vega has promised that his party will “restore freedom” to the Valencian Community and has warned that his formation will be “vigilant” so that the objectives set out in the government pact with the PP are met, given the possible “temptations to agree with the socialism”
