The impossible PP-PSOE pact in Spain and Aragon: from the non-formal request to Lambán to the vetoes of Ferraz

The future president of Aragon never hid his desire to govern alone. He repeated it over and over again during the campaign for the regional elections and, after winning them resoundingly, although six seats shy of an absolute majority, Jorge Azcón (PP) asked the rest of the parties represented in Parliament, including the PSOE, to abstained from his inauguration in order to constitute a “focused and moderate” regional Executive.

The one who had to pick up the gauntlet on the bench of the main opposition group was precisely one of the most critical socialist barons with the political extremes, both on the right and on the left, and who in 2016 internally aligned himself with those in his ranks who opposed the It is not for Pedro Sánchez to pave, with one abstention, the path of the popular Mariano Rajoy to La Moncloa to avoid a second electoral repetition. In Javier Lambán's team, however, they maintain that the request was never formally processed.

“First Azcón said that he would have a government with the PAR and Teruel Exists and now he has agreed with Vox. He considered that he governed with one or the other, he did not need us,” they explain from the environment of the still acting regional president. And would the circumstances be different if there had been a firm request for abstention? “Azcón has always been disqualifying us and throwing lies. This is impossible”, they settle.

In any case, the national leadership of the PSOE itself would have predictably rejected an agreement of these characteristics when the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is trying to assert his status as winner of the general elections to ask Sánchez to facilitate his investiture. This same week Ferraz has paralyzed a budding agreement between the socialists of Ceuta and the popular Juan Jesús Vivas, who even adding an absolute majority with the Vox deputies does not want to agree with them so as not to put coexistence in the autonomous city at risk, with a 40% Muslim population.

fourth coalition

Aragon will thus inaugurate the fourth regional government of which Santiago Abascal's party is a part after those of Extremadura, the Valencian Community and Castilla y León. The last pact is the most ideologized of those signed. It includes measures such as the repeal of the Autonomous Democratic Memory Law and the reform of the Law on Gender Identity and Expression and Social Equality and Non-Discrimination, approved for the protection of the transsexual community..

On gender violence, the agreement speaks of “macho violence”, an advance compared to the expression “eradicate macho discourses”, which also appears, as in the Balearic Islands and Extremadura. Unlike the latter, in Aragon they cite “domestic violence” twice, Vox's preference.

“The pact inaugurates a reactionary stage of inequality and annulment of rights and freedoms,” said Lambán this Friday, who will not lead the opposition, but has marked “three missions” for the party: “Oppose the announced decisions, defend the 2015 legacy -2023 and prepare the alternative for 2027”.

No regionalist parties

After the scrutiny of 28-M, the PP prevailed with 28 deputies followed by the PSOE, with 23. The most fragmented regional Parliament in Spain is completed by Vox (7), La Chunta (3), Teruel Existe (3) and Podemos, IU and PAR (one seat each).. The coalition formula with the party of Santiago Abascal for which Azcón has finally ended up opting gives him an absolute majority in the Cortes.

This will be the first legislature in which no regionalist party will be part of the Government of Aragon, which has a long history of agreements between political parties. Until now, even in the legislatures of the bulging majorities of the socialist Marcelino Iglesias, or the Chunta -left nationalist- or the PAR -center-right-, even both, as in the quadripartite of this last legislature, had had a share of power in the Pignatelli Building.