The history of the PP through the Valencian Community: of the massiveties in the bullring to the protests in the street | Spain

The Valencian Community seemed like a good showcase when, in July last year, the popular decided that it was in their capital where it was celebrated, at the end of this month, The European PP Congress. The fourth most populous community is a traditional feud of the party, which has governed the region for two decades – between 1995 and 2015 and since 2023 -, but a few weeks after being celebrated, Alberto Núñez Feijóo He tried, without success, to change the headquarters of the conclave. He argued that there are control session in Congress those days, but they knew the calendar since January. The most immediate reason is that the host, Carlos Mazón, president of the Generalitat, has had to reduce your public appearances to the maximum because wherever it goes it is booed by its DANA management and that was not the image that the popular wanted to offer before their European colleagues; Among them, the most powerful woman in the EU, Ursula von der Leyen. The background reason is that the community houses a failure that periodically unleashes a political earthquake. The history of the party can be told through that territory that was the epicenter of corruption scandals and inaugurated the second wave of government agreements with Vox that since then monopolizes the conversation around the PP.

« The Valencian Community is a banner, the cradle of heavyweight and has made us win many elections, » says a popular former leader, « but everything has happened to us. The stage of corruption scandals was very hard, but I think that now it is much worse. » Isabel Bonig, the predecessor of Mazón at the head of the party in the region, recalls: “Everyone wanted to come to the Valencian PP because it was a party. We governed the community for 20 years and the City Council of the capital, 24. It is the symbol of the full bullring, of the absolute majorities, with a very strong territorial implementation. Sometimes you thought: ‘How could we win with this candidate? And it was because there was a very strong machinery behind it.

The Valencian Community contributed 33 seats to Congress in the July 2023. In 1996, year of José María Aznar’s first victory, The Valencians granted the acronym 15 deputies – the total advantage obtained by the then president of the PP over the socialist Felipe González – with 1.13 million votes (43.7%). In 2000 they rose to 1.26 million ballots and 19 seats; In 2008, they obtained almost 52% of the votes (1.4 million) and 19 seats in the camera; In 2015 they dropped to 11 and April 2019, to 7, with less than 500,000 votes. It was in Valencia where the PP came to consider, in 2016, change its name. « I ask the militants who are fed up, » said Bonig, « to take a step forward to build a new party from honesty. » The acronym were linked to a cataract of corruption scandals and « re -foundation » should be, in their opinion, total. « We came to shuffle it, » he explains today, « because the feeling was that we had to start from scratch. We had lost governments, virtually no one wanted to receive us, the game, so accustomed to winning, was absolutely demoralized … we shuffled the change of name and we raised the primary, the limitation of mandates … ».

« All the councilors of the PP of Valencia, » recalls a popular former leader, « They were charged”The scandals were reproduced at the municipal, provincial and autonomous level. Three of the four presidents of the Generalitat that the party has had, Eduardo Zaplana, José Luis Olivas and Francisco Camps, were prosecuted. The first, which became a minister in the governments of Aznar, was Last October to 10 years in jail for the crimes of bribery, prevarication, falsehood and money laundering in the Warm caseon the plot of Award of the service stations of the technical inspections of vehicles (ITV) in exchange for bribes between 1997 and 2000. Olivas was acquitted by the same case, but it was Condemned a year and a half in prison for issuing a false invoice to justify an income of 500,000 euros for a job you never did. The National Audience acquitted Camps last May at a trial of the Gürte casel in which the main leaders of the plot were convicted (including Francisco Correa, Pablo Crespo and Álvaro Pérez, The mustaches). The judges were proven by the Award of Autonomic Administration during the presidency of Camps, but considered that the indications collected against him were not enough. The courts also condemned corruption to a good part of their team, among others, their general secretary, Ricardo Costa; His vice president Víctor Campos – another of his vice presidents, Juan Cotino, died in full judgment against him-; its regional manager, Cristina Ibáñez; his secretary general of the parliamentary group, David Serra; his treasurer, Yolanda García; his counselor and president of the Autonomous Chamber, Milagrosa Martínez; his Minister Rafael Blasco; and its director on the Radio Televisión Valenciana, Pedro García Gimeno. In 2012, Camps also became acquitted in another judgment by bribery in the so -called case of the costumes. A jury of nine considered him « not guilty » by 5 to 4.

Camps has been trying to return to the first line of politics for years. « He writes to everyone, sends messages through third parties, lets him know that Vox offered to be a candidate for mayor of Valencia; which was close to creating an independent party … », recounts a former popular leader who does not rule out his return, « but not in the position he wants, but as a senator. » The expressor was decisive at another key moment in the history of the PP: the first congress that the party celebrated outside Madrid, precisely in Valencia, when, in one of those tectonic movements that periodically shake the game, they wanted to move the chair to Mariano Rajoy. It was the year 2008. In March, the PP had lost the generals and a few days before the June conclave, the then president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirrepronounced a speech before his boss of ranks In a forum ABC which was interpreted as the departure pistol of his campaign. The leaders He used up to 15 times the expression « I do not resign myself »: « I do not resign that the Popular Party does not give ideological battles. I do not resign that we have to look like the PSOE to appear a centrism or modernity. And since I do not resign these other things, I am in the Popular Party willing to give the battle so that the Spaniards really know the open, modern and liberal option. said. In his book I don’t shut up (2016), Aguirre thus refers to the episode: « I have to explain that, no matter how much Zaplana and Nacho González (his successor at the head of the Madrid government, accused in several causes for corruption) will encourage me, I was never determined to present myself. » But none of the consulted for this report has doubts that he threw back for the support of Camps, who mobilized the Valencian compromisaries so that there were no surprises: « Aguirre did not take the passage through the weight that Valencia has in the PP, » a former leader settled.

A few years later, in July 2011, Camps resigned as president of the Generalitat and of the PP in the Valencian Community. He presented his farewell as « a personal and political sacrifice » to « not be an obstacle » on the path of Mariano Rajoy to the Moncloa. He President had won the regional May of that year being already charged, increasing its absolute majority in a seat, but the game did not want to go to the campaign of the November generals with one of theirs on the bench. Camps had resisted resigning, so the national direction of the PP promoted an intermediate solution: that it declared itself guilty and signed compliance to avoid the trial. When everything was prepared, and after Federico Trillo, as he admitted, « guided the decision a bit, » the President He agreed to leave all his positions, aware that that was what Rajoy wanted. « Politics », summarizes Bonig from that period between the Valencia Congress and the resignation, « it is incredible turns. » Camps had survived the war with Zaplana, to the one that replaced as totem of the PP in the community, but not to the errands of the man he had saved in 2008.

In 2021, the direction of Genoa, then headed by Pablo Casado and Teodoro García Egea, He fish again in the Zaplanista family -he Expresident He had appointed Carlos Mazón General Director of the Valencian Institute of Youth with only 25 years – to try to recover the Generalitat. In 2023, the married candidate became the most voted, by improving in 21 seats the result of the previous elections, but stayed 10 of the absolute majority. Behind the new leader the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, according to the leaders consulted for this report, Mazón negotiated A GOVERNMENT PACT WITH VOX in which he assumed part of his postulates, for example when referring to « domestic violence », not macho. « That, » explains a former popular leader, « it cost Feijóo to be able to govern, because he did not consult and conditioned him in the July general campaign. » The one in the Valencian Community was the first of the coalition agreements derived from the regional of May 2023. The PP spokesman himself, Borja Sémper, then attributed to « bizarre gestures and geek » of whom he aspired to be his « governing partner » that many of those who thought to vote them would not have done it « given the risk that Vox could condition the Spanish politics. »

This week, Mazón has done it again. To move forward the budgets, has embraced the catechism of the extreme right in terms of immigration, linking it to crime, or about climate change, criticizing the European green pact. « It is totally in the hands of Vox, » says Bonig. « That with all the work to be done, the most important thing is to know the nationality of those who participated in the looting seems childish and poor, and it reveals little political and moral height. But in the medium term I do not see that there will be a change because the pressure has been enormous and it has not gone, unless Feijóo says so far we have arrived, as happened with camps when I was going to sit on the bench. »

Another former popular leader shares that with Mazón they have no “possibility” and that Its management in the Dana « It is deeply damaging the PP brand. » « Here, » he adds, « there is an emotional component, there are dead, and there is no sentence that acquits you of that. But I am not pessimistic. With a good profile, we have wicker to achieve a good result because the party is very based in Castellón, in Alicante and in the south of Valencia, and there is an implementation of very important mayors. But for now this is doing much more damage than the stage of corruption. »