The key gesture made on Sunday by Spain's far-right Vox - offering the votes of its 33 MPs to the People's Party (PP) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, without themselves being part of its government - has opened a glimmer of hope for the Spanish conservatives in their almost-impossible mission of winning an investiture vote that will allow them to unseat Pedro Sánchez and form a government of the right in Spain. In the PP leadership there is the conviction that, without Vox in government, the path has fewer obstacles. In fact, the party's general coordinator, Elias Bendodo, has now boasted that they have "more support than Pedro Sánchez". "This is the reality", he affirmed this Monday in an interview with radio station Cadena Cope. The PP is focused on the hope of winning support from the Unió del Poble Navarrès (UPN), the Coalició Canària (CC) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), whose doors it has knocked on again this Monday after the softening of the stand of Vox. But the Basque Nationalists are a very tough nut to crack, if Vox is part of the equation, and they have once again made it clear this Monday that they do not intend to move.
Abascal's yes to the PP without insisting on being part of the executive opened a new dimension in the relationship between the two Spanish parties to the right of the PSOE, after Feijóo and Abascal had earlier held a number meetings in the aftermath of the 23rd July elections. A few days after both parties sealed yet another autonomous community government pact - this time in Aragón - Vox went out on a limb on Sunday by offering the votes of its deputies to invest Feijóo as prime minister and prevent the state from falling into the hands of what it called "the enemies of Spain" . At present, the sum of PP and Vox votes gives their bloc a total of 170 deputies which, with the addition of the single UPN deputy and the solitary CC representative, would rise to 172, thus making the five votes of the PNV essential to reach the required majority of 176.
For Bendodo, Vox's movement "gives the green light to a possible PP investiture", implies that "the rules of the game are changing" and represents, in his opinion, that there are now "different circumstances for those who took a position from the beginning", in reference to the PNV's strong refusal to support Feijóo. But if the PP believes it has a better chance of convincing the conservative Basque nationalists to climb aboard the wagon if Vox will not have the reins of a hypothetical government, then this Monday they once again had the door slammed in their face by the Euskadi party. "Nothing changes," said PNV sources. "If anyone thinks we will change our minds, they don't know us", says the tweeted reply which refers again to the statement they sent to the PP one day after the election, in which they rejected Feijóo's aspirations to court them. The proximity of the Basque autonomous elections makes it almost utopian to assert that they will change their stand.
El 24 de julio, el Euzkadi Buru Batzar fijó su posición con meridiana claridad. Ante el intento de algunos actores políticos y mediáticos, tanto en Euskadi como en España, de construir una realidad alternativa, estimamos oportuno y conveniente refrescar su memoria. 👇 https://t.co/exThyhqYAh
— EAJ-PNV (@eajpnv) August 7, 2023
Tweet translation:
"On July 24, the PNV leadership board established its position with absolute clarity. Faced with the attempt by some political and media actors, both in the Basque Country and in Spain, to build an alternative reality, we consider it opportune and appropriate to refresh their memory."— EAJ-PNV
With the Central Electoral Commission having, this Monday, refused to review the null votes cast in Madrid - which the Socialists believed could have returned them one more seat from the PP - sources in the conservative party express the idea that right now Feijóo has "171 votes in favor of him presiding over a solitary PP government", and "Sánchez could only avoid this if, after losing the election, he tries what no one has ever done." That is, "opting for an investiture after being defeated and opting for the support of each and very one of the nationalist or pro-independence parties in our country." In this respect, they affirmed that "Feijóo will do everything possible to expand his support in the coming days and to get the Congress of Deputies to invest him as prime minister".
The first battle is to take place on August 17th: the day on which the Spanish Cortes must be constituted. On that date, the PP hopes to take control of the position of speaker of Congress to put obstacles in the way of a possible Sánchez legislature with pro-independence parties. In any case, Vox's movement represents a change of trend in the relationship with the PP. With the exception of the new Balearic Islands executive, the extreme right has demanded to enter all the PP autonomous community governments since the first time a PP-Vox pact was agreed in 2022 in Castilla y León. The last few weeks have seen PP-Vox deals in the Valencian Country, Extremadura and now Aragón. Now the right needs to resolve the impasse in the region of Murcia.