Vicente Barrera: the bullfighter who flirted with all the rights and will be vice president of Carlos Mazón for Vox
Vicente Barrera has been a surprise figure in Vox's negotiations with the Popular Party, not only to reach a government agreement but also to design the next Consell. The pieces fell into place when Santiago Abascal's party appointed him as the man who would occupy the vice-presidency of the Valencian Government and would assume the powers of Culture, which will also include Sports.
“I will be a bullfighter until I die,” he has repeated over and over again despite the fact that he cut his ponytail 12 years ago after 17 years since Curro Romero gave him the alternative. Since then, with his law degree under his arm, he has had a fondness for politics to all rights.. He first approached, when he was still active, the PP of Francisco Camps. In fact, he was the star guest at the Provincial Congress of Valencia in 2008, in full euphoria of absolute majorities of the popular, and, since then, his figure has been linked to the seagull brand. Camps, Rita Barberá and Alfonso Rus were the political figures who accompanied him in a large exhibition organized about his career when he retired from the arena in March 2011. In October of that year, the Generalitat, now headed by Alberto Fabra, awarded him the High Distinction of the Generalitat. He did not hesitate to go in January 2012 to hug Camps at the gates of the Superior Court of Justice when the former president was acquitted in the suit case, one of the first judged pieces of Gürtel.
However, the continuous outbreak of corruption cases made all those figures with whom Barrera had personal harmony disappear.. Disenchanted, he approached Rosa Díez and UPyD in 2012 and was a recognizable face at their events in Valencia. The decomposition of the formation, swallowed up by Ciudadanos, left him without a political option. He was seen in calls for the regionalist right until, in 2016, Vox broke in.
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The defense of the primary sector, hunting, traditional values or bullfighting made him identify it as the party “that was missing in Spain” and he joined. His work was organic, without a relevant position in the provincial structure but as area coordinator in Ontinyent with 17 municipalities under his charge.. It is in the region of La Vall d'Albaida where he has the family farm where he enjoys the countryside and horses, two passions, together with his eight-year-old daughter, whom he prides himself on taking to the bulls to transmit “our culture”.
He confessed at the start of the regional election campaign that his leap into the arena of politics had been out of pure ideological conviction, without waiting for any charge.. In those days in mid-May, he was listed as number 7 in the Vox candidacy for Valencia City Council and, although the polls were favourable, he knew that it would be difficult to be a councilor. Even so, during the campaign he proposed to organize 'bous al carrer', a popular bullfighting celebration, through the streets of the historic center of the capital.
Grandson of a bullfighter and great businessman
Today his position in the party is much stronger, although it has been a surprise that, without being an organic or elected position, he was part of the negotiating committee with the PP. The reason is that he was aiming to become one of the representatives of Vox in the Valencian government.. Although his profile fit in Agriculture, his notoriety has made the vice-presidency, with the powers of Culture, his place.
Linked “sentimentally and as a 100% fan to the world of bullfighting”, his professional activity moved away and he directs family businesses. If his paternal grandfather was a bullfighting figure, his maternal grandfather was a well-known businessman, José Simó, founder in 1919 of the well-known brand of Paduana blankets in Ontinyent.
Barrera is listed as administrator of two real estate companies, Edificaciones Formabil and Naves Industriales Viator, and of an importer and marketer of tuna from Mexico. In addition, he is a director of a wine company based in Logroño. His figure also fit into the other area that Vox will control: Agriculture.
The public notoriety of a former matador and his full involvement in the values of Vox have opened the doors of a government in which he will have to be the counterweight, even in image, to Carlos Mazón.