The far-right Spanish Vox party will enter for the first time a right-wing regional government in Castile and León (center), the formation and the People’s Party (PN, right-wing) were announced on Thursday, March 10.
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“We have reached a legislative agreement with Vox (…) that will allow (to take office) a stable and solid government,” the outgoing president of this region, Alfonso Fernandez Manueco (PP), who could be reappointed thanks to this agreement, said on Twitter. Vox, for its part, has indicated that he will be the vice president of the government of this region near Madrid, which, like other regions of Spain, has very wide powers in this very decentralized country.
A representative of the far-right party was also elected on Thursday as chairman of the regional parliament. In the early elections in February in Castile and León, won by the People’s Party (PP) but without an absolute majority, Vox won 17.6% of the vote and 13 regional deputies out of 81 seats to one earlier. The Socialist Party in power in Spain immediately denounced Vox’s entry into this regional government, in what was called a “shame pact” with the PP.
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Vox caused shock at the end of 2018 by returning to the Andalusian parliament (south), the historical bastion of the left and the most populous region in Spain. But until now, whether in this southern region or in Madrid, this party has always supported the regional leaders, led by the NP, but not part of it. At the national level, Vox became the third power in the country after the legislative elections of 2019 and has 52 deputies out of 350 in the Spanish Parliament.