The PP launches an offensive against Cs in the Valencian Community and signs its former parliamentary leader

• Politics The PP turns to recover Valencia: "If we win it is checkmate for Sánchez"

• Elections Villacís, electoral rival of the PP in the capital and a door that remains open in Genoa

The PP has not been able to sign Begoña Villacís, but it is going to consummate two imminent incorporations of Ciudadanos.

It is about the former deputy mayor of Zaragoza,

-as this newspaper advanced on Tuesday- and the former spokesperson for Cs in the Valencian Parliament,

who resigned a few days ago from her position due to "discontent" and " discouragement" with the process of refounding the party, of which she had been critical.

This is how the regional candidate of the Popular Party as Carlos Mazón will announce it this noon, as EL MUNDO has learned.

Merino, who is an economist and Treasury technician, will join the economic team of the Valencian PP to pilot the "fiscal revolution".

Also, he will have an "important" role on the charts but they haven't talked about it yet.

"A very powerful future is predicted for him in the PP," say sources familiar with the negotiations.

The signing of Merino will join that of other

positions in this community that have passed to the

ranks , such

(both in Alicante).

PP sources add that in the Valencian Community there will be more signings, not only from Cs, but "from civil society."

The former trustee of CS in the autonomous Parliament resigned on January 12.

Then, she stated that the refoundation process, the primaries and their result "will not serve" so that the Ciudadanos party to which she joined "has a future", and this discouraged her from running in the primaries.

For

, the Valencian Community is the jewel in the crown of the 28-M elections.

That is why the PP is going to turn there in the coming months.

In Genoa they believe that if they govern in this community and maintain power in Madrid, they will have "checkmated" Pedro Sánchez.

"If the PSOE does not maintain the Valencian Community, it will have serious problems to continue in the national government. With the

and with the cut in the transfer we have an opportunity to checkmate" the socialists, say the popular ones, who believe that if the PSOE does not revalidate the Valencian Government "it will be the end of Sánchez".

First Toni Cantó, now Merino

That Ruth Merino could make the leap to the PP was an open secret.

First, because she herself left the door open when she tearfully announced that she was leaving Ciudadanos.

She did so resentful of the party for which she had stood up when

slammed the door first, assuming that she was her substitute in the Valencian Courts.

However, in this last primary process, no one from the national leadership had given her any sign that they trusted her to lead the future project in the Valencian Community.

Rather the complete opposite.

With a moderate profile, this State Treasury technician had already left the possibility of a future return to politics up in the air in mid-January when she resigned from all her posts.

"Who knows, life is very long," she came to say.

And she, asked which party she felt closest to, she did not hesitate to answer that the PP.

In this sense, Merino has always defended the discourse of economic liberalism, although she herself has also always placed herself in the political center.

The president of the

Valencians, Carlos Mazón, did not hesitate to praise his career hours after his departure from Cs was made public.

What's more, Mazón has been insisting for some time that his project to reach the Generalitat goes through a

.

Her contacts with Merino had been taking place for some time, long before she formalized her departure from Ciudadanos.

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