Vicente Coll Madrid

Eduardo Colom Palma

Madrid

Palm

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-02:40

  • Politics Vox expels the five deputies of its party in the Balearic Islands in opposition to the national leadership

  • Partidos Abascal resolves its 'express' renewal and heads into its tenth year at the head of Vox without internal rivals

After opening an unprecedented political and institutional crisis, the war unleashed between the Vox leadership and its Balearic delegation not only threatens the stability of the Government of

Marga Prohens

(PP) but also puts the Popular Party on alert in the regions and mayors in those he governs thanks to his alliances with those of

Santiago Abascal

.

All this after Vox fractured in the Balearic Islands in an irreparable and unusual way: the parliamentary group rebelled yesterday and fired its leader,

Patricia de las Heras

, and the president of the Parliament,

Gabriel Le Senne

, something to which the national leadership responded with the expulsion of the five deputies who "unilaterally" carried out the dismissal.

However, and for reasons of the parliamentary regulations themselves, the wayward deputies will maintain the name of the group, their offices and the income that corresponds to the formation, despite not having the support of the party. The incident is similar to that experienced by Vox in the Region of Murcia in 2020.

That Abascal loses control of his party in the Balearic Islands puts the stability of the Executive in the archipelago in check, given that Prohens (with 25 seats out of a total of 59) will have to rely on these five rebels to carry out the legislature. This situation is notably displeasing to Vox and, inevitably, opens a new phase in its relations with the PP in other regions.

The general secretary of Vox,

Ignacio Garriga

, warned yesterday about how the rebels had acted: "unilaterally" and "for a strictly personal matter." A warning to sailors in the direction of the

popular ones

, with whom they share governments in Castilla y León, Valencian Community, Region of Murcia, Aragón and Extremadura. Both in Genoa and in the governments of these regions they call for "tranquility" and ignore internal issues that affect other parties, in reference to Vox.

Yesterday Prohens limited himself to pointing out that his party is the guarantor of "stability" and did not want to speak out or interfere in what he defined as an internal matter of Vox. He also tried to limit the crisis to the parliamentary sphere, saying that it does not affect his Executive. But the trance experienced by Abascal's formation and his irreparable internal fracture does affect the health and stability of the PP in the Balearic Government.

New majorities

The 25

popular

deputies in the Parliament need another five for a sufficient majority and in this new scenario it remains to be resolved, for example, who will be the parliamentary interlocutor of the PP, which sealed an agreement with Vox after the regional elections to invest Prohens, or who will preside over the Chamber after the Vox parliamentary group expelled Le Senne and was blown up.

The deputy who leads the Vox break in the Balearic Islands against the national leadership,

Idoia Ribas

, is running to preside over the Chamber. It remains to be seen whether her name will be validated by the PP within a week, when the Parliament votes to replace the presidency, and how Vox will digest that scenario. Sources from the new pro-government sector of Vox in the Islands (apart from the five wayward deputies) yesterday considered it probable, and defended that in the current situation the best thing would be an electoral advance, something unlikely.

When not even a year has passed since the regional elections (held on May 28), the specter of an early election is a hypothetical debate, since it is not legally possible until a year has passed since the dissolution of the Chamber, but existing. Faced with a group of deputies without the umbrella of a national party, Prohens aspires to be able to continue carrying out his policies alone, defending against Genoa the same autonomy with which he negotiated the pact with Vox (it is the only community in which they did not enter into the Government) and prepared to extend budgets if necessary. With a dynamited external partner, the leader of the Balearic PP is already treading uncharted territory.