It is an unprecedented impasse. The PP and Vox are experiencing their moment of least friction since Alberto Núñez Feijóo took over the presidency of the popular. They measure their words, avoid stepping on calluses and focus on common enemies. If, in addition to an impasse, it is a tactical mirage, it is something that only time will tell, but the truth is that circumstances – that is, the polls – have led Feijóo and Santiago Abascal to an entente cordiale against the alliances of Pedro Sánchez. Not only because the two share forcefulness in the face of the demands of the independence movement, but because neither of them rules out, far from it, the electoral repetition. And if Vox wants to capitalize on its autonomous pacts, the PP wants to gobble up the right-wing electorate, better in January 2024 than in a few years.
In fact, for Vox the scenario of returning to the polls would be the best possible, as its leaders acknowledge. Above his second preference, which would be an agreement between the PP and the PSOE to leave out the nationalists and independentistas.
In addition, over Genoa and Bamboo now flies over the understanding in Murcia, the fifth community in which the PP has Vox as a government partner. The agreement was decided by the national situation, since the popular could not break with the same party from which they demanded free support for the investiture. Murcia weighs, and not a little, in the new national harmony of both formations.
With this situation on the table, both leaders took their first joint photo (sought, agreed and intentional) yesterday, one year and five months after the change of leadership in the PP. Feijóo met with Abascal for an hour and a quarter in Congress to talk about the investiture, and thanked him for “the unconditional support.” «With Vox there are legitimate differences that we have and that we may have in the future, but there has been respect. This is how it will be in the communities in which we have reached a governance agreement and this is how it will be in the face of the investiture,” the popular explained at a press conference.
Feijóo has 172 votes tied up, but it doesn’t go from there. This Tuesday, Santiago Abascal guaranteed him the support of his 33 deputies and today he will also consolidate, during his meeting with the Canarian president Fernando Clavijo, that of the only seat of the Canary Coalition and, finally, has the yes of the UPN deputy. There are no more possibilities to increase the balance. This Tuesday he was reminded by the socialist spokesman in Congress, Patxi Lopez, for whom the leader of the PP is “blocking” the country in a “little theater” of contacts that will not earn him more votes than those already known.