The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, demanded this Monday from Vox an “understanding” between both parties “with responsibility” to “not frustrate the majority of Aragonese” after this Sunday’s elections, in which Jorge Azcón lost two deputies and about 10,000 votes while those of Santiago Abascal doubled the results. Feijóo fears that the rise of the extreme right will hinder his options and has demanded that he “not repeat the mistakes of 2023”, when the regional negotiations ruined his options to govern.
Feijóo has met its National Board of Directors as usual after an election. The PP has organized the usual mass reception for Jorge Azcón, although the presence of the most important leaders has greatly decreased compared to the Extremaduran elections in December.
The leader of the PP has dedicated his open speech to justifying the result in Aragon, and attacking both the Government and its only possible ally. “We started from very high up,” Feijóo explained about the result in Aragón where, he assured, Azcón’s leadership has been “consolidated” and the distance with the PSOE has been “widened.”
Feijóo has done what was planned: use the regional result to attack Pedro Sánchez and ask for his resignation, which confirms the national strategy of the chain of regional elections called at the end of 2025 and the first part of 2026. “They have told Sánchez that enough is enough,” said the opposition leader, who asked himself “how many electoral blows does he need to understand it? How many more debacles for him to leave?”
The leader of the PP has accused him of “prolonging the political agony of Spain” and has mixed the result in Aragón with the “47 families broken forever by neglecting the infrastructure”, in reference to the Adamuz train accident.
Feijóo has described the open electoral cycle in Extremadura as a “democratic beating.” “So much dealing with Mars and no one has told Sánchez that he is the one far away from Spain,” he said ironically, in reference to the exchange of tweets between the owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X, Elon Musk, and the President of the Government.
“It is not a conspiracy,” he said. “People can’t stand him anymore. We are telling them so at the polls,” he said. “If he wants to continue turning a deaf ear, pretending that he is fighting ‘Star Wars’ when his is more like ‘Torrente, President’, that’s up to him,” he snapped, concluding with one of the right’s favorite insults against Sánchez: “Galgo de Paiporta.”
Feijóo also dedicated a dart to Podemos in his speech: “The distance between the Government and its partners and the people is so stark that they have started with what Podemos calls a replacement strategy. If you don’t like what people vote for, don’t try to convince them. Change people and that’s it. They call this humanity. They call this sensitivity to immigration.”
“Vox cannot become a wall”
Feijóo has also addressed the key issue of this electoral cycle consciously opened by the PP itself: Vox and its electoral takeoff, which has placed it on the verge of 20% of the vote in Extremadura and Aragón.
The leader of the PP has gone from promising that he would govern alone to begging for the support of the extreme right for his candidates, with an eye on his own needs when the general elections are held.
“I want to address Vox with a single word: responsibility,” he said. Feijóo has demanded that Abascal’s team “not repeat the mistakes of 2023” so as to “not block an alternative to the Spanish.” The leader of the PP thus expressly points to Vox as the culprits of the fiasco of his first attempt to win the Moncloa, when he was just four seats short of the majority sufficient to be invested.
The post-electoral pacts after the elections in May of that year and his own investiture pact with Vox prevented him from joining other groups, which gave Pedro Sánchez a chance to build the precarious majority that made him president for the third time.
“We respect all their voters, but I also ask for respect from our voters who are the majority and those who have won,” said Feijóo, who has accused Santiago Abascal of becoming a “wall” that prevents him from “expanding” the PP project and “gathering even more Spaniards.”
“Vox cannot become a wall,” he said. An express reference to the words spoken by Sánchez in 2023 during his investiture debate, when he said: “If we continue to normalize the extreme right, if we continue to give it levels of power, they will increase the aggressiveness of their policies and blend in with their international references. (…) The only effective wall against the policies of the extreme right in communities and city councils has been the Government of Spain.”
Vox’s demands
While Feijóo was speaking, the Vox spokesperson, José Antonio Fúster, has demanded that the PP be part of a coalition government in Aragon, with ministries with real powers and budgetary weight that allow them “changes” in the policies that interest them, among which are the fight against green policies, illegal immigration and tax cuts, among others.
Abascal’s party thus follows the script of Extremadura, where the threat of an electoral repetition is increasingly certain.
At a press conference from Vox’s national headquarters, Fúster announced that the party does not rule out asking for a vice presidency and several councils, but with “structure and budgets to be able to make policies” and not just “to appear.” “We want very clear responsibilities with very clear budgets to apply the policies we want to apply,” he indicated.
Guardiola and Mañueco point out Vox
Before the meeting there was a decaffeinated parade of PP barons before journalists at the door of the national headquarters. This Monday the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, attended the meeting, who has fled from journalists in the week in which her partner must present his defense brief in court. The president of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, also attended; the Extremaduran, María Guardiola; the Castilian and Leonese, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco; the Balearic, Margalida Prohens; and Azcón himself. The rest of the barons with command in the plaza have been absent.
The acting president of Extremadura has accused Vox of blocking an agreement for her re-election due to her demand for positions in the negotiations despite sharing the majority of the program. “In the policies that have been worked on, we are practically in more than 90% agreement,” he assured. “What happens is that this is accompanied by a catalog of positions that Vox will have to tell. I want to be discreet because we have given each other that loyalty at the negotiating table, let Vox tell what it is asking for,” she concluded.
Guardiola has also claimed his result in the elections last December, better than the one achieved this Sunday by Jorge Azcón in Aragón. In statements to the media before attending the National Board of Directors of the PP, the ‘baroness’ assured that “43.2% of Extremadurans” gave her their “trust” at the polls. “Now I have to form a Government. In Aragon the PP has obtained 34.3% of the vote.
“Vox will have to decide if it wants to continue being a crutch for the PSOE and give it oxygen so that it can reach May 27,” in reference to the regional and municipal elections next year, “or roll up its sleeves and get to work, which is what the citizens are asking of us.”
Mañueco, for his part, has launched the pre-campaign for the elections scheduled for March 15. And he has also charged against Vox. “Our strategy is to talk about Castilla y León. Talk about the people of Castilla y León, about what the problems and needs of Castilla y León are. And of course, to say clearly that the PP is a different party from Vox,” he assured.
Mañueco has attacked what was his Government partner after the 2023 elections: “We know what they did and what their result is. Because Vox had government responsibilities in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, to give an example. They left the job halfway, threw in the towel and left.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
