The leader of the Popular Party, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, will undergo his third investiture session as president of the Junta de Castilla y León on Tuesday, June 9, after the governance agreement reached on Wednesday the 3rd with Vox, which will allow the configuration of his third coalition executive and the second consecutive one with Santiago Abascal's party, already a partner in the first part of the previous term.
Fernández Mañueco will be proclaimed president of the Junta with the support of the Popular Group, with 33 representatives, and the Vox Group, with 14, while the rest of the opposition forces have announced their vote against. This has been confirmed by the spokesperson for the Socialist Group, Carlos Martínez, and the spokesperson for the Mixed Group and representative of UPL, Alicia Gallego, to whom the representative of Soria ¡Ya!, Ángel Ceña, has joined, who has also announced his rejection. "The pact --PP and Vox-- would have to change a lot," he stated.
The Board of the Cortes, after hearing the Board of Spokespersons, has set the investiture plenary session to begin at 12:00 PM with the initial presentation, without time limit, by the candidate, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. The session will resume at 4:00 PM with the intervention of the Socialist Group and, subsequently, the rest of the formations from smallest to largest representation –Mixed Group, Vox, and PP–, with 30 minutes for the first intervention and 10 minutes for the reply. Fernández Mañueco will be able to respond individually or jointly, also without a time limit.
The three parties that make up the Mixed Group –UPL, Soria ¡Ya!, and Por Ávila– will divide the time according to their parliamentary weight –three representatives for the first and one each for the other two–, so they will have 18, 6, and 6 minutes in the first round and 6, 2, and 2 minutes, respectively, in the second.
The order of interventions has generated friction in the Board of Spokespersons, as Vox argued that the Mixed Group should open the debate, followed by the PSOE, and closed by the two parties that will support the future regional government, Vox and PP. Finally, the Board has opted to maintain the scheme of previous plenary sessions, so that the PSOE will open the turn, with its new spokesperson, Carlos Martínez, followed by the rest of the groups, also with newly appointed spokespersons: Alicia Gallego, in the Mixed Group; Carlos Pollán, in Vox; and Leticia García, in the PP.
As the spokespersons have advanced in their subsequent appearances, the swearing-in of Fernández Mañueco as president of the Junta will be held in the "following days", although the exact date has not yet been specified.
Martínez has based the vote against the 30 socialist procurators on the content of the agreement signed on Wednesday by the "duo of tightrope walkers" --Fernández Mañueco and Pollán--, whom he has accused of spending days seeking a middle ground "to deceive and hide the massive deception to which they want to subject all citizens and of which they themselves are not absolutely convinced". "Vox is the only animal that stumbles twice on the same stone, also knowing that they will be deceived and knowing that neither of them is trustworthy," he has ironized.
In the same vein, he has warned that among the "certainties" of a document "full of ambiguities" signed by PP and Vox is that the government model of the future Executive is outside the Statute of Autonomy, clashes with the Spanish Constitution, is outside the Declaration of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and conflicts with the Charter of Human Rights.
Furthermore, he has added that the next regional government will also be outside the Social Dialogue and dialogue with civil society, and has warned that PP and Vox put citizen participation "at clear risk" while "demonizing and criminalizing unions and employers to permanently monitor them."
Both Alicia Gallego and Ángel Ceña have emphasized that the government pact does not specifically address the problem of depopulation in Castilla y León, with an average density of 324, nor does it include a single mention of differentiated taxation for very depopulated territories such as Soria or Zamora. They have also criticized that PP and Vox demand infrastructure from the central government but only reserve three lines for the regional road network "without detailing absolutely anything."
For his part, the spokesperson for Vox and signatory of the pact has urged the opposition groups to read the government document carefully in order to debate "on the issues that are truly there", among which he has cited housing, employment, public services, and the rural world, which, he has assured, will be "one of the main priorities" of the future Executive, in which he will serve as first vice president.
In similar terms, Leticia García has defended that the PP feels "very comfortable" with the "profuse, complete and broad" agreement sealed with Vox, considering that it addresses "many fundamental axes" for the day-to-day of the Castilians and Leonese and incorporates the commitment to move forward with budgets for the four years of the Legislature.
García has censured the criticisms of the formations contrary to the pact, who, in her opinion, reject it "due to script requirements" and "only talk about their own things and their own priorities" while "they lie and falsify reality," a reproach she has expressly directed at Carlos Martínez. "It is embarrassing to hear him talk about the Rule of Law, about Democracy, about legality, about compliance with the law. The truth is that it is embarrassing, it causes secondhand embarrassment to hear them talk in that sense," she has asserted.