Negotiations between PP and Vox to elect Carlos Mazón’s replacement at the helm of the Generalitat Valenciana have already begun in a very discreet way, with a first meeting held this Friday. Both groups agree to avoid public meetings and images that could jeopardize the agreement. Génova has dissociated itself from the talks that the Valencian PP is carrying out with the national management of Vox, but the management of Alberto Núñez Feijóo still intends to supervise the outcome. The main obstacle is the policy on migrant children, according to sources close to the talks, as Santiago Abascal’s party increases its demands on this point. Late yesterday afternoon, Vox released a short statement in which it invites the Popular Party to decide who will be its candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in order to agree policies directly with him, in order to put pressure on the PP and impose its conditions on it, since the Popular Party had chosen not to define Mazón’s successor in this first phase.
Although neither party reported where and how the “first contact” took place this Friday, Abascal’s party released a short statement celebrating that in that first meeting it was able to verify “the good will to negotiate”. But then the ultras demanded that the PP now put a name on the table and that the chosen one negotiate directly with Vox. The party asked the PP to define “who will be its new candidate for the (Presidency of) the Generalitat Valenciana so that, once appointed, it can agree with him on his willingness to agree on policies that will allow him to continue in the reconstruction of the Valencian Community and in its defense against the destructive policies of Pedro Sánchez”.
In addition to this first request from Vox, the key lies in the policies that the ultras are asking the PP to adopt. Negotiating sources insist that, beyond Vox’s express request to the PP for a frontal rejection of the European Green Deal plan, the obstacle at the moment would remain in unaccompanied minors, where Abascal’s party is very tough.
The general secretary of Vox, who leads the ultras’ negotiating team, Ignacio Garriga, warned that his party will maintain a “firmer and more demanding attitude” than in previous negotiations with the PP.
Montserrat Lluis, recently promoted to the position of deputy general secretary of the party, also participates in the Vox conversation team. The choice of these interlocutors demonstrates the importance that Vox attributes to the negotiation of the future president of the Valencian Community, which Abascal has transformed into a test bed for the new generation of agreements that it aspires to reach with the PP. After the agreements following the regional elections in May 2023, in which Vox gave priority to entering coalition governments, its strategy now involves influencing the PP leaders from the outside, imposing its own policies on them.
For the PP, the first vice-president, Susana Camarero, and the minister of Transport, Vicente Martínez-Mus, who this week also assumed the vice-presidency of the reconstruction of the Dana following the departure of the military Francisco José Gan Pampols, are participating in the talks. The PP has no national leader at the table, but Génova will follow up, with the aim of ensuring that what has been agreed does not interfere with subsequent electoral calls, especially in Extremadura, which will vote on 21 December.
Another key to the negotiation is the good relationship between Mazón and the leader of Vox, which helps understanding. Mazón called him to inform him of his decision to resign and Abascal did not hide his anger towards Feijóo for letting him fall. He even accused him of having given “a scapegoat to Pedro Sánchez”, who Abascal considers “the great culprit of the Dana tragedy”.
To this we must add the political ecosystem of the Generalitat Valenciana. Unlike other autonomies, where the People’s Party co-governed with Vox, in Valencia the budgets were approved and the relationship between the two parties was positive.
The name of the future president
The Valencian PP tries to unblock Mazón’s resignation without naming specific names, something Vox does not agree with. The objective, if the pact between the two parties is finally signed to avoid elections in a few months, is to elect a transitional president, who would last until the 2027 elections and, above all, until the next regional congress of the Valencian PP, for which there is no date yet.
The idea is that the transitional president is Juanfran Pérez Llorca, current secretary general of the Valencian People’s Party and Mazón’s right-hand man. Judge Dana summoned him to testify as a witness on November 21 at 9.30 am, that is, two days after the deadline, November 19, for the PP to register the candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat.
The key to success is that in the Valencian Community, as in other territories, only a deputy from the Valencian Cortes can be elected regional president. And no member of the Mazón government is. This is why all eyes are on Pérez Llorca, especially because the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, who is also a member of parliament, has withdrawn from the race for succession to the interim presidency, although it would be different if it were a candidacy in the elections.
“I want to be mayor for many years, as many years as the Valencians want,” insisted the councilor on Thursday, who reached an agreement with Vox to approve the budgets of the Municipality of Valencia for 2026. Catalá separated the success of her negotiation from that of the Valencian Community, but was confident that both parties would carry out “agile and loyal” talks in the Generalitat.
Genoa also hopes for an agreement that aims to be rapid to interfere as little as possible in the next electoral cycle. Feijóo and Abascal spoke last Tuesday and the conversation they had “in good tone” raised Génova’s expectations about the possibility of reaching an agreement. But the popular know that Vox has the upper hand. On Thursday evening, Abascal and Feijóo attended the anniversary ceremony OKDiary in Madrid. The far-right leader warned the PP leader on the microphones that with his change of attitude towards Vox he was playing a “very dangerous lottery”. According to Genoese sources, the event was not discussed.
The PP awaits the development of the talks with uncertainty, while Feijóo faces a new process of possible attrition in the search for an agreement with the ultras. From the climate summit held in Belém, in the Amazon, the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, pressured the leader of the PP to allow elections in the Valencian Community after Mazón’s resignation with the aim of “breaking the denialist majority” of the PP and Vox. Feijóo responded by calling for a change of government, arguing that “if it cannot solve citizens’ problems and if its president is surrounded by cases of corruption, we must change the government and change the president”. The Valencian negotiations advance under the spotlight in the prelude to an electoral cycle in which the two major parties compete.
