The far-right Vox party is set to form part of a regional Spanish government for the first time after cutting a deal to run the north-western autonomous community of Castilla y León with its bitter rivals in the conservative People’s party (PP).
The deal, which comes almost a month after the PP’s decision to call regional elections failed to produce the absolute majority it had hoped for, follows weeks of wrangling amid a PP leadership crisis.
Although the PP finished first in February’s vote, its victory was pyrrhic and proved yet another misstep for its leader, Pablo Casado, who will stand down next month.
Emboldened by finishing in third place behind the Socialists – and picking up 16 new seats in the 81-seat regional parliament – Vox had pushed for a place in government.
On Thursday, Alfonso Fernández-Mañueco, the incumbent PP president of Castilla y León, finally acceded to its demands, saying his party had reached an agreement with Vox that would “allow for a solid and stable government”.
According to reports, Vox will be given the regional vice-presidency, three regional ministries and the speakership of the Castilla y León parliament.
Although the party has in the past supported the formation of PP-led administrations in Madrid, Andalucía and Murcia, this is the first time it has secured a place in a regional government.
The agreement was swiftly criticised by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which governs Spain in coalition with the far-left Unidas Podemos alliance.
The PSOE’s vice-secretary general, Adriana Lastra, said it was a “pact of shame” that had brought the far right back into power for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship. Lastra also laid the blame at the door of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP president of Galicia, who is set to take over from Casado.
“The far right is back in government 40 years on, thanks to Feijóo,” she tweeted. “Today is a bad day for Castilla y León and for Spanish democracy.”
Her comments came hours after Feijóo said that Spain needed “a new politics that listens and offers moderation and calm”.
Vox – which has called for a “reconquest” of Spain, the building of an “unbreachable wall” around the north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and the repealing of laws on gender-based violence – regularly rails against what it sees as the hegemony of political correctness.
Vox has managed to become the third largest party in Spain’s national parliament by exploiting culture wars, discontent with the country’s two main political parties and the fallout from the 2017 Catalan independence crisis.
Polls suggest it is now nipping at the heels of the PP, which, under Casado, has had a contradictory relationship with its far-right rival. In October 2020 – less than two years before his party agreed the Castilla y León coalition – Casado rounded on Vox, accusing it of practising a politics based on “fear, anger, resentment and revenge”.
