Mañueco assures that he will maintain the funds against gender violence

Alfonso Fernández Mañueco wants to be sworn in as president by the Cortes as soon as possible and has given an order to “expedite as much as possible” the investiture debate. He sees it as difficult for it to be next week – the parliamentary groups have seven days to form themselves and the new president, from Vox, must first settle the protocol for the round of consultations – but he does not want it to be delayed and by that time he hopes that the structure of the coalition government with Vox is “closed”, with that distribution of seven ministries for its people and three for those of Santiago Abascal.

One day after signing the legislature agreement with Vox, Mañueco has assured that his Executive will maintain the funds that the Board dedicates to fighting Gender Violence and that the law on domestic violence that includes the pact will not mean the repeal of the Law Against Gender Violence that has been in force since 2010 in the community. It has advanced that the latter will be “modernized”, without specifying what this “updating” will entail, after defending that the replacement in the argument of the PP of Castilla y León of the term gender violence to replace it with domestic violence is not, in his opinion , transcendent: «The important thing is not what it is called, but what it will consist of».

Alfonso Fernández Mañueco has stressed that the Decree on Historical and Democratic Memory will remain in force, in an agreement with Vox without attacks on Social Dialogue and unions and in which he has framed within ‘normality’ to include the consolidation of a “free” educational model of ideological indoctrination”, despite the fact that he has argued that there is none in the classrooms of Castilla y León. “It seemed important to us to emphasize this matter,” he justified. Will Castilla y León release the parental pin that Vox defends? The acting president has avoided speaking out.

“This government is going to act normally, that they judge us by what we are going to do, not by what you think we can do or say,” Alfonso Fernández Mañueco demanded after meeting on the morning of this Friday, March 11, with the provincial presidents of the party to analyze the alliance with Vox. Among this group of leaders there are those who privately express reluctance about how giving an institutional charter to the ultra-conservative party, which they see as a strong competitor in the municipal elections of May 2023, can influence. Mañueco assures that there is no internal criticism and that the provincial presidents of the PP «neither in public nor in private have they transferred them to us». Also that he will work for a result in that appointment “even better” for the party than that of 13-F, in which the popular ones were the most voted force, but they were 10 seats short of the absolute majority in a chamber with 31 seats for them, 28 for the PSOE, 13 for Vox, 3 for UPL, 3 for Soria. Now! and 3 that are distributed United We Can, Citizens and Por Ávila.

Pablo Casado, a “surprise”

At the gates of the congress that will make Alberto Núñez Feijóo president of the PP, the alliance of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco with Vox squeaks internally. “This pact is from Castilla y León, we had our hands free,” defends Mañueco, who censures Pablo Casado’s reaction criticizing the pact with the ‘far right’. The leader of Castilla y León says that it has caused him “surprise, neither that it is critical nor do I disagree (with what Casado says), surprise is surprise, exclamation… Surprise, it has surprised me,” he said, before taking out a piece of paper in which he had written a part of Pablo Casado’s intervention in the Executive Committee of the Popular Party held after the scrutiny of 13-F and read: «Alfonso, you have the support of this national executive committee to negotiate the continuity of this government of success”. And surprise also by the harsh reaction of the popular in the EU. “I don’t know what could have happened in the European People’s Party, it surprises me,” said Mañueco, who defined the pact between the PP and Vox as that of “two forces with differences” that reach a “common position, of balance” after a negotiation based on “the legitimacy that the polls give us.”

Alfonso Fernández Mañueco offers to resolve “doubts” to European leaders about the alliance he has sealed with Vox. Also to the Spaniards of his formation who have expressed reservations, as is the case of the Andalusian Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla. And he crosses the box when he is asked about Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s opinion. “This deal is at this time and in that community,” he stresses.

And then, he sets his sights on the practical, on his investiture as president that guarantees his continuity at the head of the Junta de Castilla y León. “This community needs to have a fully functioning government as soon as possible,” he remarks. Something that depends on the rhythm that Vox marks in the Cortes that he presides over and in the negotiation on the distribution of councils and subjects.