The Vox municipal group in the Valencia City Council was not bluffing. This Friday, the group led by Juanma Badenas - and which unsuccessfully implores to be part of the local government of the city - fulfilled its threat and voted against the renewal of positions in the management of the public company EMT proposed by the popular ones. In this way, the representative of the extreme right on the Board of Directors of the Municipal Transport Company joined Compromís and PSPV to deal the first blow to the mayor, María José Catalá, who governs with a minority in the main council of the Community Valencian.
A blow that could be the first of many if the mayor continues not wanting to agree with Vox on the formation of a new municipal government, as Badenas himself reiterated yesterday.
Until now, the PP (with 13 of the 33 councilors) had managed to carry out the votes either with the support of its preferred partner (Vox) or with the support of the opposition on those symbolic issues such as green capital that the far-right rejects. However, yesterday he had his first defeat of the legislature and could not proceed with the planned changes in the EMT.
Vox justified its refusal to support the new appointments by the fact, its spokesperson explained, that they were people who had just held positions in the Botànic government in the public company FGV dependent on the Generalitat and it did not understand why the names President Carlos Mazón did not like them and they were welcomed by Mayor María José Catalá.
An indirect way of pointing out that he cannot understand - and this unnerves Abascal's people - how it is feasible for the PP to govern the Generalitat with Vox and it is not feasible to co-govern the Valencia City Council, where the Popular Party does not have an absolute majority either. Badenas already reported this week his discomfort with the fact that the PP does not accept his offer to share the government team despite his repeated offers.
With this panorama, the relationship between the Catalá team and the one who was called to be its preferred partner - in the words of the mayor herself - is more tense than ever after a week in which Vox has even questioned a possible conflict of interests of the Councilor for Large Projects, José Marí Olano, for working in a company that advises Peter Lim, Valencia CF's largest shareholder.
Thus, it would not be surprising if Vox ends up knocking down one of Catalá's star proposals at the beginning of the legislature: the tax reduction. While in the Generalitat the two parties have had no problem announcing the suppression of the Inheritance and Donation Tax, as well as a significant battery of tax deductions, Badenas has left the approval of the tax reductions approved by the PP in the air in the Local Government Board.
We say leave it up in the air because it seems difficult for Vox to stop supporting a proposal that is in the DNA of its electoral program, although if yesterday's statements by its spokesperson are taken into account, the vote against seems decided. "If they do not want our participation in the preparation of fiscal ordinances and in the governance of the City Council, they will not count on our votes either," said the municipal spokesperson for the far-right. One more example of the tension between two parties condemned to understand each other.
