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Spain’s conservatives and far-right Vox increase ties with Andalucía coalition

Deal including ‘national priority’ policy brings prospect closer of countrywide agreement between parties The prospect of a national coalition between Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) and its far-right Vox party has drawn closer still after the two groupings sealed another deal that will allow the PP to continue ruling the southern region of Andalucía. The PP, which has governed the former socialist bastion for the past seven years, lost its absolute majority in May’s regional election , forcing it to look to Vox to help it stay in power in Spain’s most populous region. The incumbent PP regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, had hoped to govern alone in order to avoid depending on Vox, which has been seeking to drag the PP further to the right in regional coalitions by insisting Spaniards receive priority over foreign-born people for housing and public services. Although Moreno had rubbished Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy as “a sensationalistic but empty slogan” during the campaign, the coalition agreement, signed on Thursday, explicitly guarantees “national priority in accessing public benefits”. The agreement also rejects the immigration policies of Spain’s socialist-led central government and says Andalucía will not accept any more unaccompanied migrant children. Other priorities include opposing “the imposition of ideological agendas when it comes to caring for the environment”, defending intensive livestock farming “in the face of criminalisation from the animal rights lobby and the climate policies developed in Brussels”, and protecting and preserving bullfighting. As in other regions where the PP and Vox govern in coalition – Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León – the new Andalucían government wants to overturn legislation that was introduced four years ago to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and the subsequent Franco dictatorship. It intends to replace it with a so-called “harmony law”, which the national government, historical memory associations and UN experts have all decried as a blatant attempt to whitewash, justify or eradicate the horrors of the Franco era. In a recent TV interview, the PP leader – who was touted as the man who would bring the party back to the centre ground when he was appointed four years ago – said that while he hoped to govern alone, he had no intention of “demonising” Vox. “If it turns out that we need to make a deal for a coalition government, we’ll sit down and we’ll form a government coalition that’s in line with the basic principles of our parties and we’ll set out a series of red lines that I won’t cross,” he told Antena 3’s El Hormiguero last month. Despite relying on Vox to prop up three regional PP governments, he eventually turned on the far-right party in an incendiary speech to congress six years ago . “You brag about being populists with your demagoguery that offers easy – and usually fake – solutions to complex problems,” said Casado. “The People’s party doesn’t want to be another party of fear, of rage, of resentment and revenge, of insults and skirmishes, nor of manipulation, lies and backwards opposition.”