After an intense negotiation between the Popular Party and Vox, the Aragon Courts have elected this Friday as president of the Table the far-right deputy Marta Fernández, who obtained an absolute majority thanks to the sum of both formations during the vote. Her election represents a triumph for those of Santiago Abascal who, with only seven deputies compared to 28 for the popular ones, have achieved the position without compromising their support for the investiture of the popular Jorge Azcón.
Fernández, 57, thus becomes the second woman to hold this position in the Cortes of Aragon. The woman from Zaragoza has a degree in Law and her last legislature was her first experience in active politics. On her social networks, she denies gender-based violence and expresses herself in favor of tougher sentences, although as soon as her appointment was known, she deleted her Twitter account.
With this result, the Aragonese panorama is thus in a situation similar to that experienced in the Balearic Islands, where the popular ones granted the presidency of the Chamber to those of Santiago Abascal without having closed their support for the investiture of the popular president.
In Aragón, Azcón has said time and time again that he aspires to govern alone, and the presidency in Parliament would be the price he is willing to pay to prevent the ultra-right from entering the regional government. A bargaining chip that is still not known if it will be enough to appease the aspirations of entering the Executive of the ultra formation, even less in view of the general elections and the hard negotiating spirit that they have shown up to now.
“Today’s agreement does not prejudge anything or determine any other agreement,” said the vice president of Vox, Jorge Buxadé, at the gates of the Aljafería palace. “It shows that when the PP has the will to negotiate and has common sense, loyalty and good faith, things work,” he asserted.
Abascal’s lieutenant also assured that his party continues with “hands outstretched” to negotiate in Extremadura “until the last second”, something that was extended to other places where arithmetic allows replacing the left.
His partner Pepa Millán, spokesman for Vox in the Senate who also went to Zaragoza to show his support for his regional leader, Alejandro Nolasco, was more critical of the popular. “We have no problem reaching agreements. The problem is that we have 17 different PPs, the first thing will be to know which PP we are talking to, ”she stressed in reference to what happened in Extremadura. “Our message is always the same,” she added.
The forge of the pact in Aragon has experienced bizarre moments. Late in the afternoon, the popular ranks considered the talks broken and called to resume them the next day before the start of the session for the formation of the new Cortes.
However, a couple of hours later, Vox issued a surprise statement announcing an agreement between the two for their deputy Marta Fernández to occupy the presidency of the institution. The statement caught the popular ones on the wrong foot, who initially did not confirm the news and did not ratify it until this morning.
In this sense, the popular confirmed that representatives of both formations have decided to set up a working group “to explore the possibilities of reaching an agreement based on a program of change.”
To achieve that governability alone, Azcón has also been negotiating for days with the Aragón Party (one deputy) and with Teruel Existe (three seats). In their internal calculations, the popular have the vote in favor of the first and the probable abstention of the second. But to have the investiture fully guaranteed they also need at least the abstention of the extreme right, something that today is not guaranteed.
