The inauguration of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco as president of the Junta de Castilla y León will be marked by the absence of the national leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who He does not go to Valladolid this Tuesday. The advance election of February 13, which did not meet the expectations expected in the conservative formation, ends its path two months later with a bittersweet ending. The PP candidate won the elections and revalidates the presidency, but he does so accompanied by Vox for the first time in a coalition.
A pact that opens a new scenario in Spanish politics and, above all, makes Santiago Abascal’s party a formal partner of the popular. To Feijoo he choked the agreement from the beginning and he did not see the negotiation with good eyes either that allowed the ultra to stay with the presidency of the Cortes.
The Galician leader has defended that Mañueco should form a government, reproaching the PSOE for demanding a cordon sanitaire without offering an alternative so as not to depend on Vox. But the leader of the PP will not be in the institutional act that crowns the new president. In his place comes the number two of the party, Cuca Gamarra.
Feijóo will be meeting throughout the day with business organizations (Cepyme and CEOE) and unions to work on the tax reduction proposal that he will send to Moncloa at the end of the week. In his meeting two weeks ago with Pedro Sánchez, he agreed that he would send him a document prepared despite the fact that the Government denies the possibility of these tax reductions. Genoa is focusing a large part of his efforts on that document, including Feijóo’s agenda. But no one escapes the main reading that the national leader is not by Mañueco’s side on a key day. who will be will be Isabel Díaz Ayuso who, with all certainty, will monopolize all the attention.
The president of the Community of Madrid defended from the first moment an understanding with Vox so that Mañueco could be inaugurated president, in the face of the reluctance of other party colleagues, including Juanma Moreno Bonilla, who will be the next to go through the examination of the urns. The policy of pacts with Vox is the main course that Feijóo will have to face in the short and medium term, with a more than evident internal division in this regard. There are leaders who are in favor of take on the ultra party as one more partnerunderstanding that after the next electoral cycle they will have to replicate the pact of Castilla y León in order to govern.
On the other side of the coin are who consider it essential to mark distances with Vox and look for alternative ways to govern without them. Feijóo himself defends a model that goes along these lines and, hence, the PSOE’s insistence on respecting the principle that the list with the most votes governs.
The absence of the national leader will be amplified by others of weight such as that of the Andalusian Juanma Moreno. Neither will the president of the Region of Murcia, Fernando Lopez Miras, which also celebrates in its community the big day of the spring festivities, the Bando de la Huerta. There are other leaders who have confirmed his attendance, such as the Extremaduran Jose Antonio Monago and the Castilian from La Mancha, Paco Nunez. The former presidents of the Board Juan Vicente Herrera, Juan José Lucas and Jesús Posada will also be present.
In Castilla y León they naturally face the low attendance of heavyweights in the match, noting that the “objective & rdquor; it was to govern again and that is what they will do. But weeks ago, after the Seville congress, some leaders did not avoid show your discomfort about losing weight in the internal power of the community. Especially when seeing that Feijóo renounced to include in his address a Castilian-Leonese quota to prioritize that of Castilla-La Mancha with the appointment of Carmen Navarro as deputy secretary of the social area. Internally, the decision was understood as a “punishment” for the negotiations with Vox.
The 2019 inauguration of Mañueco was attended by Moreno Bonilla and the then president of the Community of Madrid, Pedro Rollán, today deputy secretary of Autonomous and Local Coordination in the direction of Feijóo. Mariano Rajoy was also there.
The new coalition government
After taking office, Mañueco must appoint the advisers of his government. For now, only the four members of Vox have emerged. The vice president, Juan Garcia-Gallardowho will not have an executive portfolio associated with the position, but will instead have the presidency of the Delegate Commission of the Government and of the Administrative Simplification Commission (including environmental procedures), in addition to the substitute representation in the Committee of the Regions, the Commissioner of the Victims of Terrorism and the institutional representation of the relations of the organs of the administration of the community with the Consultative Council of Castilla y León and the Common Prosecutor.
In addition, the Vox proposal includes Gerardo Dueñas, Gonzalo Santonja and Mariano Veganzones for the ministries of Agriculture, Culture and Industry and Employment respectively. The concern in the PP is the designation that Abascal’s party makes of the second level positions that are really those who manage the day to day of the Board. On the other hand, Mañueco still has to reveal the PP councilors (seven in total) who will complete the organization chart of the new regional government.