On April 19, Alfonso Fernandez Manueco he took office as president of the Junta de Castilla y León, thanks to the 13 votes that Vox gave to the PP in the investiture debate.
Since that government pact was signed between the popular and ultra-right, the political environment in the community has been rarefied to the point that the Plenary Sessions of the Courts or the different commissions have grabbed headlines in which insults and disqualifications have been highlighted among opposition and members of the government.
But, in addition to the confrontations within the Executive, this first year of the PP-Vox government agreement has left several open wars in the community. At least five.
1. Confrontation with the unions
The two majority unions in the community -CCOO and UGT- announced a strategy of continuous mobilizations to fight for active employment policies, labor relations services or the prevention of occupational hazards. The arrival of Vox the government has made these issues, priorities for workers, are not taken into account. The signing of the budgets was the last time that the representatives of the unions asked Mañueco to dismiss the Vox directors and call early elections.
Before, the streets of Valladolid responded to the call of unions and other organizations and packed into a large demonstration in November in which the community shouted “enough” to the extremist and destructive policies of Vox.
For his part, the controversial Garcia-Gallardo responded to union requests cutting subsidies by 20.3 million that both they and employers receive in Castilla y León. From Vox it was announced that it was a “superfluous” expense and the vice president also accused the unions of being “anesthetized” with subsidies and renouncing “fair demands”. A truly open war.
2. Feminist movement
On November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the headquarters of the Parliament of Castilla y León did not light up purple. As explained by members of the opposition, the president of Parliament, Carlos Pollan (Vox), told them that this decision had been taken as “an energy saving measure”. However, to celebrate Dyslexia Day (October 8) or Acquired Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura Day (September 22), there was no excuse to light up the building.
In short, this refusal was just one more battle in the war of the extreme right against the feminist movement. It must not be forgotten that Juan García-Gallardo, vice president of the Board, has already provoked the ire of the entire opposition in full by referring to the first sexist murder in the autonomous community since it was in the PP-Vox government as intrafamily violence.
At the beginning of October, García-Gallardo returned to scandalize the Castilians and Leonese by affirming that there are “heartless women” who use “perverse incentives” of the laws against gender violence to obtain custody of their children. She also added that “Spain is the only country that has legislation that creates courts only for men.”
In fact, since last March 15 when PP and Vox signed the government pact for Castilla y León, it included as a specific proposal from Abascal’s party a “law to combat intrafamily violence”, that is, one that does not affect in specific violence against women.
Against these postulates of the ultra-right, the entire opposition has faced off, while the PP condemns sexist murders, but does not make your partner’s gestures ugly.
3. Management of forest fires
Forest fires this summer destroyed more area than in the last four years combined, three people died and more than 95,000 hectares burned.
The ecological damage in the Sierra de la Culebra (Zamora) or the Sierra de Francia (Salamanca) is irreparable, but this was never a priority for the popular and extreme right in Castile and Leon. The economic losses, according to members of the La Culebra association have assured Public They have exceeded 150 million euros and these began to worry the team of Mañueco (PP) and García-Gallardo (Vox) because they generated significant discomfort and even forced them to enter the funeral of those killed in the fires through the back door .
Months before, it should be remembered that the Minister for the Environment, Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, he refused to clear the mountains to prevent the spread of a fire. Even then, and also after the forestry and animal tragedy, blamed environmentalists for the fires.
The Castilian and Leonese firefighters were the great heroes of the environmental catastrophe that the territory suffered and they themselves denounced Publicsince the beginning of the fires, the lack of help from the Junta de Mañueco and Vox.
The institutional response of Vice President García-Gallardo to this situation was viral. A series of tweets with measures to which more populistculminating in an idea that was based on hiring “unemployed” who want to “help clean up the forests” or a benefit concert for those affected.
“It’s ridiculous, everything is wrong,” replied a forest firefighter, fed up with his management claims not being heard.
4. Corruption, accusations and other judicial problems
Prevent the judicial decision on the alleged illegal financing of the PP in Salamanca it exploded in the face of Mañueco was the tip of the iceberg that forced the popular to advance the lectures in Castilla y León.
In the case of Salamanca, the events started in 2019 with an anonymous complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office that pointed out an alleged illegal financing of the PP in this province to lead the current president of Castilla y León to be the leader of his party in the community. But to reach that candidacy, Mañueco allegedly led a plot by forcing his public officials in Salamanca to deliver money to cover the fees of PP affiliates who were not up to date with their payments to the party and, therefore, could not vote. in the primaries.
Now, imputed to his party and his right hand, cases multiply around the Popular Partywith the resignation of Javier Santiago Vélez, the president of the Leonese PP, to avoid the legal case for the primaries he won.
Corruption has reached the plenary session of the Cortes, where Ana Sánchez, socialist attorney, asked Alberto Núñez Feijóo on the 14th if he was going to request “the resignation of Mañueco for the alleged illegal financing of his primaries. Because they were his primaries,” he stressed.
Sánchez relied during his speech on an article in Public in which it was announced that this cause would lead the PP of Genoa to the bench, together with the already resigned president of the PP of Salamanca, Javier Iglesias and the party manager, Isabel Sánchez, wife of also senator Bienvenido de Arriba.
The PSOE attorney then lamented the “systematic method of decades of corruption” of the Popular Party and has listed cases as “Wind, Perla Negra, Portillo, Enredadera, Púnica, Solar, Gürtel, Burgos hospital, Lezo, the City of the Environment, Arroyo…“.
5. The numbers and the embarrassment in the budget vote
The most recent confrontation between the PP-Vox government and the full opposition has come during the budget vote.
The atmosphere was already rarefied a priorisince the majority held by popular and ultra-rightists allowed them to approve them without taking into account any of the amendments tabled by the opposition: 1,008 from the PSOE or more than 400 from United We Can, nothing less.
Pablo Fernández, spokesman for the purple group, assured in this regard that “Mañueco once again demonstrates that he is a pathological liarhis offer of an outstretched hand was another hoax”, while he called the Vox attorneys as “lazy, drones and lazy” when remembering the number of amendments that they presented being in opposition: zero.
Luis Tudancageneral secretary of the PSOE in Castilla y León, regretted after the vote that these “budgets consolidate the attack on equality, social dialogue and public serviceswhile increasing spending on senior positions (the highest in history)”.
And it is that, after its detailed study, it has been publicized that the vice presidency of the Government of the Junta spends 1.2 million euros on staff (300,000 of them addressed only to Juan García-Gallardo and his three senior officials) and dedicates 112,000 euros to investments.
But the last scandal of the year came, without a doubt, when PP and Vox supported the PSOE amendments to the Law of Measures that accompanies the Castilla y León Budget Project.
The berlanguiana This situation provoked a protest from the PP, which demanded a repeat of the vote, while the PSOE recalled that it could not be repeated and the president of the Cortes, Carlos Pollán (Vox), took a recess in the middle of the vote for more than an hour, something absolutely anomalous according to the regulation
