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

The possibility of a national coalition between Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party has moved closer after the two groups signed another agreement that will allow the PP to continue governing the southern region of Andalusia.

The PP, which has ruled the former socialist stronghold for the past seven years, lost its absolute majority in regional elections in May, forcing it to look to Vox to stay in power in Spain’s most populous region.

Incumbent PP regional president Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla hoped to govern alone to avoid being tied to Vox, which has tried to drag the PP further to the right in regional coalitions by insisting that Spaniards receive priority over foreign nationals in housing and public services.

Despite Moreno was thrown away Having dismissed Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy during the campaign as a “sensational but empty slogan”, the coalition agreement signed on Thursday explicitly guarantees “national priority in access to public benefits”. The agreement also rejects the immigration policies of Spain’s socialist-led central government and says Andalusia will no longer accept unaccompanied migrant children.

Other priorities include opposing “the imposition of ideological agendas on environmental protection”, defending intensive animal husbandry “in the face of criminalization of the animal rights lobby and climate policies being developed in Brussels”, and protecting and perpetuating bullfighting.

As in other regions where the PP and Vox govern in coalition – Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León – the new Andalusian government wants to overturn legislation introduced four years ago to bring “justice, compensation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and the ensuing Franco dictatorship.

It aims to replace this with a so-called “harmony law” that the national government, historical memory associations and UN experts have condemned as a blatant attempt to whitewash, justify or eliminate the horrors of the Franco era.

While Moreno hailed the coalition agreement as a “sensible, fair and legal legislative agreement” that would bring four years of stability, his boss, national PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, praised the returning regional president’s “commitment, capacity for dialogue and vocation to serve.”

Manuel Gavira, who will serve as Vox’s leader in Andalusia and regional vice president, said the agreement would ensure a government that “defends common sense and improves the lives of the Andalusian people.”

Regional elections in May were a disaster for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), led by prime minister Pedro Sánchez. It fell from 30 to 28 seats in the 109-seat regional parliament; this was the worst result ever in Andalusia. Although PP finished first in the race, it saw its number of seats drop from 58 to 53, while Vox gained one more seat and finished the race with 15.

The left-wing Adelante Andalucía party rose from two seats to eight seats, while the left-wing coalition Por Andalucía retained the five seats it won four years ago.

The PP-Vox coalition in Andalusia comes as Sánchez’s inner circle and party are battered by a series of corruption cases and Spain prepares for next year’s general elections. Polls show that PP will finish first in the race, but may have difficulty gaining an absolute majority and may remain dependent on Vox for governance at the national level.

Feijóo has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of a national coalition with Vox. In a recent TV interview, the PP leader, who was touted when he was appointed four years ago as the man who would bring the party back to the centre, said he did not intend to “demonise” Vox, although he hoped to govern alone.

“If it turns out that we need to make an agreement for a coalition government, we will sit down and form a governing coalition in accordance with the basic principles of our parties and draw a series of red lines that I will not cross,” he told Antena 3’s El Hormiguero last month.

Feijoo’s predecessor, Pablo Casado, was weakened by his inability to decide how to respond to growing competition from Vox. Although he relied on Vox to support three regional PP governments, he eventually came out against the far-right party in an incendiary speech to congress six years ago.

“You pride yourself on being populist with your demagoguery offering easy and often fake solutions to complex problems,” Casado said. “The people’s party does not want to be the party of fear, anger, resentment and revenge, insult and conflict, manipulation, lies and backward opposition.”