A week of negotiations but it was not possible. PP and UPN will go to the polls separately on July 23, for the first time since 1989. The demands of UPN, which as in previous elections, when Pablo Casado was president of the PP, left the formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo without representation in Congress, made the PP prefer to run alone, with its own lists, as it did in the municipal and regional elections on May 28.
After the break between the PP and UPN a year ago, when the Navarra formation expelled its two deputies in Congress, after they broke voting discipline and voted with the PP against the labor reform, the recomposition of relations did not It has been possible, especially after the popular ones reached agreements with the formation created by the two expelled deputies, one of whom was the head of the PP list, as an independent, for the mayor’s office of Pamplona.
But after knowing the results of May 28, the PP approached the president of the Unión del Pueblo Navarro, Javier Esparza, to offer him to go in coalition to the general elections on July 23, in an attempt to join forces to try to stop the advance of Bildu in the Foral Community, which has become clear in the municipal and regional results of May 28, in which despite being the UPN the force with the most votes in the regional parliament, the union of the Socialist Party of Navarra and EH Bildu , will allow the socialist candidate to continue governing. The PP was in fifth place, behind UPN, PSN, EH Bildu and Geroa Bai.
After these results, the PP offered UPN to reach an agreement to go together to the general elections in July, as they have done for a decade, which the popular consider more essential than ever “due to the exceptional circumstances” of this electoral call, “where The concentration of the vote in the center-right space around the PP is producing, to which is added the decision of Ciudadanos not to attend the elections â€, according to sources from the popular leadership.
But UPN rejected on Wednesday the possibility of forming the coalition, despite which the PP sent the Navarrese formation that it kept this possibility open until the deadline for running in a coalition closed on Friday night, and even raised UPN the possibility, until the last minute, of going together, if it could not be through a coalition, by incorporating UPN members in the PP lists, as independents. On Thursday night, UPN made an offer to the PP, which meant repeating the agreement under the same terms as in 2019, that is, with the first two positions in Congress for UPN, and leaving them the first position in the Senate, but the PP made a counter-offer in which UPN would be the head of the list and the PP would reserve second place, which after lengthy negotiations that lasted well into Friday night, UPN rejected, and the PP refused to cede further. .
The national leadership of the PP then assured that its will is to “join efforts to offer Navarrese a center-right option that many of them have chosen in previous general elections; in addition to freeing them in Spain from a socialist government in the hands of nationalist parties and which grants weight and decision-making capacity to formations like Bilduâ€, and for this reason it continues to leave open the possibility of including UPN members on its lists as independents.
PP and UPN went to the elections disunited, for the first time since 1989, in the municipal and regional elections in May, and obtained 89,643 UPN votes, compared to 23,080 for the PP, while in the previous municipal elections, where the two parties went together, they achieved 124,336 votes. In the last general elections, the Navarra Suma coalition, which made up these two parties, obtained 99,078 votes and two deputies, who later left the regional formation in disagreement with the UPN position on the labor reform.
