Noa de la Torre Valencia

Valencia

Updated Sunday, March 31, 2024-00:10

  • Valencia Vox challenges the PP in the City Council and demands compliance with the government pact after the latest disagreements

  • Generalitat The Valencian vice president of Vox confronts Mazón in public for the first time and accuses him of "buying the ideological framework of the left"

Stress tests became popular after the 2008 economic crisis as the stress test that banks had to undergo to demonstrate their resilience in a scenario of turbulence. And

Vox

is subjecting the

PP

to a real stress test

in the

Valencia City Council

. Those from Santiago Abascal have just demanded that the mayor, the

popular

María José Catalá, comply with the government pact, after weeks of disagreements in which the tension between both partners has only increased. A situation that, however, contrasts with the image of compact government conveyed by Carlos Mazón's

Generalitat

.

According to his lieutenant in the party, the general secretary of the PP of the Valencian Community,

Juanfran Pérez Llorca

, the discrepancies between both partners on the local and regional scene are "very respectful." According to Mazón's right hand, PP and Vox "on some issues they are at the opposite end." "But the important thing is that the Valencian Government functions as a block," says Pérez Llorca.

And, in fact, both parties recently registered in the

Valencian Cortes

four law proposals on education, transparency, "concord" and regional radio and television that imply a full-fledged reform of the main policies implemented by the left in the last eight years. The fifth bill, the one relating to the

Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency

, bears only the signature of the PP, but without further problems or consequences for the relationship between both partners.

In both parties it is ensured that they naturally accept the differences, which can even be publicly recorded, although as long as the message of the Consell de Mazón is unique. The vice president of the Generalitat, Vicente Barrera (Vox), has made some attempt to distance himself from Mazón's speech, which in any case he has praised, saying that he could well be in Vox.

Barrera has only questioned Mazón on specific occasions (against an LGTBI campaign, for example) and only to make it clear that he did not agree with a certain policy, not to overturn it or try to block it as happened in the previous left-wing tripartite. PP and Vox, on the contrary, have placed the stage in the Cortes to settle their discrepancies when necessary, in an attempt to shield the autonomous Government from the internal crises that they always blamed on Ximo Puig's Consell.

Vicente Barrera (Vox) and Carlos Mazón (PP).EFE

Now, it is in the Valencia City Council where Vox has strained the relationship with its government partner and, especially, with the mayor. If Mazón and Barrera boast harmony and a good relationship, Catalá and Juanma Badenas cannot say the same. It took four months for the Vox spokesperson and second deputy mayor to be able to sign the pact with Catalá, while Mazón sealed an agreement in a matter of days and by surprise.

In the case of Catalá and Badenas, they are old acquaintances who already met years ago in the Ministry of Education in the years before the political turnaround of 2015. They did not end well, because Badenas was rector of the

VIU University

when Catalá decided to sell it to Planeta in 2014, in the midst of a wave of cuts.

But life and politics take many turns, and both met again at Valencia City Hall. If Mazón has never been directly attacked by Vox, Catalá has had to hear from Badenas that his arrival at the council - when the PP was still trying to govern as a minority - had only served to "maintain the Ribó era."

The first months of the coalition government have been plagued by scuffles between Catalá and Badenas. The last and most notable has had direct repercussions on the City Council's investments, including an item for those affected by the Campanar fire.

They have had to delay after Vox was absent from the municipal plenary session this week in a clear challenge to Catalá. The reason, a dispute between PP and Vox over employment powers (in the hands of Badenas), and which has ended with the departure of the Valencia Activa Foundation from its manager and trusted person in Catalá, Isabel Rubio, relocated now in Mayor's Office.

For the spokesperson of the municipal government team,

Juan Carlos Caballero

(PP), the pact between PP and Vox "is not in danger." The same argument is put forward in Vox, which, at least at the local level, does not renounce branding the PP to avoid losing prominence and gaining visibility. The pact, for now, withstands the stress test.