The Environment Minister of Castilla y León, Juan Carlos Suárez Quiñones, takes pictures of several members of the Popular Party during the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Statute of Autonomy of Castilla y León at the Parliament of the region Friday in Valladolid.Photogenic/Claudia Alba (Europa Press)
There was a time when the biggest problem in the Cortes of Castilla y León was that the elevators got stuck in the Castle of Fuensaldaña (Valladolid) where they were housed. The move to the capital came in 2007 and political peace lasted there until 2019 with the PP-Ciudadanos coalition showing signs of fear that later turned into a tsunami with the rise of Vox. The extreme right, which denies the autonomous state, has governed since April 1987 with a PP at the top. The autonomous plenary hall has gained decibels and lost consensus, complain six MPs from different times and skin colors. Even the celebrations of the Statute’s 40th anniversary were marred by the disinterest of Vox, the leader of Parliament, and the disruption between blocks.
The first President of Castilla y León, Demetrio Madrid (PSOE, 1983-1987), the only former Socialist President and the only first President of the Community to have attended the anniversary ceremony in Parliament this Friday, estimates that the “political tensions and Vox’s Social Network” is even more blamed in an area “dismembered, uprooted and provincialized, despite its many contributions to the history of Spain”. He appreciates how for years a “more humane, less aggressive and less confrontational” PP and his party “searched for a consensus without abandoning the ideology”. Both he and the other respondents praise Juan Vicente Herrera, who ruled for the PP between 2001 and 2019 and has declined to take part in this report. “I’m far away ideologically, but I recognize that compared to what’s happening now, I was a democrat,” Madrid criticizes that President Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (PP) broke with Ciudadanos to join the Ultras. José Antonio de Santiago-Juárez knows Herrera well as he was his right-hand man. “It is difficult to develop a sense of community in Castilla y León, but Vox is resigning,” analyzes the former high-ranking official, who recalls collusion with the PSOE.
Every February 25, on the anniversary of the Statute, Parliament awarded public figures and held a special plenary session. This time, in an unprecedented way, there is no understanding. Carlos Pollán, President of the Cortes (Vox), ignored the opposition’s proposals and proposed the Guardia Civil. The other factions, including PP, abstained and Pollán decided to annul the award. “It’s incoherent to chair a parliament without believing in it,” concludes De Santiago. The current Socialist leader, Luis Tudanca, has been part of the “Constitutional Generation” since he was born in 1978 and grew up with the Statute. The Burgos man came to the chamber in 2015 and forged “four big pacts” with Herrera, a line he says has been frustrated since the 2019 PP-Cs pact and even more so now with Vox: “The extreme right brings noise , Mañueco put the fox in the chicken coop. They want to put an end to the autonomous state and employee representation or plurality. Everything creates an unbreathable climate”. Tudanca longs for “institutional stability and consensus”. Unions called a demonstration on the 25th against an executive that “perverts democratic legality”.
The controversy outraged Rosa Valdeón, Vice President at Herrera: “There is a noticeably bad environment and an involution of political action.” Valdeón evokes the “disagreements” of 2015, already with the fragile bipartisanship, but never “this unstoppable climate of impertinence”. The woman from Zamora warns that “in the short term there is no deterioration, the problem is social fractures” and admits that there have been “better or worse things” during her legislature, but that with Mañueco at the helm “this is not the case the party I got engaged to is.” Francisco Igea, vice president between 2019 and 2021 for Ciudadanos, endorsed the current leader before the electoral push that allowed Vox to flee.
Parliamentarian Ángel Ibáñez (PP), former President of the Cortes and a member of the Council for several years, defines Herrera’s actions and the “community pacts” with the PSOE as “useful autonomy”. Ibáñez does not quote his partners directly, but concedes that “groups with positions far from the center” make understanding difficult, “too much noise”. For him, the government had fulfilled the election mandate and, despite the “excited mood, with debates more in the trenches than in politics, which we are accused of every day”, was “focused on a pact”. Fighting between groups has clouded action this Friday in the Cortes. There, Pollán delivered a speech to former high officials and politicians and military officials on the 40th anniversary of the Statute of Autonomy, without mentioning the words “autonomy” or “autonomous community”, but calling for cooperation “without political filibusters of any kind”. . Then a “wine of honor” with each group at their table. Without mixing.
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