The slow but sure capitulation of the PP to Vox has found an anchor point in the principle of national priority, the banner of ongoing negotiations and an alibi for neo-authoritarian shortcomings. The right wing has always operated on the simplistic logic of good guys and bad guys, of "us" and

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has opened a rift in his own party with the adoption of the principle of "national priority", an emblem of the far-right Le Penist movement that has been spreading across the rest of Europe, but which the PP had never embraced. What's more, it had vehemently rejected it.

The Catholic Church has more than 1,000 alleged sexual abuse offenders. This has been acknowledged by the Secretary General and spokesperson for the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Francisco César García Magán. In a press conference this Friday, the spokesperson for the Spanish Church admitted that they have 1,131 complaints collected over the last five years and a thousand alleged offenders. This is the first time the institution has acknowledged figures of this magnitude.

The agreements between PP and Vox in Extremadura and Aragon have had a "box or fence" that was not only about management, but above all about ideological war. On paper, Vox has won it with the achievement for the first time of "national priority" in "aid, subsidies, and public benefits" – in both regions. As ARA has been able to learn, Vox approached the negotiations as a key scenario for the cultural battle a year before the Spanish elections, with two essential axes: immigration based on the slogan "first those from home"; and deregulation, the chainsaw of the Argentine Javier Milei. National priority has been an agreed element as a prelude to new offensives: "It is the Overton window," say consulted Vox sources, who cite a concept from political science that describes the progressive acceptance of ideas that were initially rejected.

President Salvador Illa is known for being a punctual person. And this Sant Jordi day, he even arrived a quarter of an hour early. The head of the executive arrived at quarter past four at the PSC stall when journalists had been summoned for half past four and made a lightning tour of the intersection of Rambla Catalunya with Diputació street. There, Illa took the first photos with some supporters and exchanged a few words with the second vice-president of the Parliament's board, David Pérez, and also with the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler.

Not even a week after the PP and Vox reached an agreement in Extremadura, the two formations are following the same path in Aragon and have also reached a pact to invest the popular Jorge Azcón. The popular party and the far-right party announced the understanding this afternoon in a joint appearance by Azcón and the Vox spokesperson in the Aragonese Cortes, Alejandro Nolasco. The staging is a carbon copy of what they followed in Extremadura to present a policy in line with the Extremaduran one, in which national priority in public policies has been the keystone. But in this case, the furious anti-Catalanism that has characterized the right in the region has reappeared, and this makes it understandable that there is an essential point that includes the defense of "freedom against indoctrination" with two star measures: "freeing Aragon from the imposition of Catalan" and initiating the "abolition of the Aragonese Institute of Catalan". That is, the PP and Vox have agreed to eliminate Catalan in Aragon.

The discursive cession to Vox in Extremadura, with the acceptance of the "principle of national priority", has borne the expected fruit for the PP. After a first attempt frustrated a month and a half ago, the popular candidate, María Guardiola, has been invested as president this Wednesday with the votes of the popular party and the far-right, which doubled its results in the regional elections of December 21. "As what the polls say does matter to me, I know that this project is only possible with Vox [...] That is why I will not apologize for governing with those who represent an important part of Extremadura," the president of Extremadura emphasized, who revalidates the position she has held since 2023. However, at the same time, in Congress, the popular party has rejected a motion from Vox defending the principle of "national priority" for access to public policies, understood as the differentiation between national and non-national when receiving aid, an interpretation that the PP rejects.

The Calvià town hall, Mallorca, is once again celebrating this year (it did last year too) a festival called Saint George, which is essentially Sant Jordi but aimed exclusively at tourists and British residents, who are very numerous in this beautiful corner of the Serra de Tramuntana. The town hall, governed by the PP with the support of Vox, considers (these are verbatim words from their website, translated from Spanish) that it is their responsibility to “highlight the significant British presence in the municipality, and foster coexistence through culture, music, and shared leisure”. To this end, and in the coastal town of Palmanova, “this festive day will take place, including an extensive program of activities for all ages in a family and multicultural environment”. The aforementioned activities “highlight the English identity and the vitality of this group with a significant presence in the municipality”. The rulers of Calvià have discovered multiculturalism of whites with whites, which would be tourist multiculturalism. This beautiful celebration will not take place on Sant Jordi's Day, but this coming Sunday, April 26th, to encourage people to go for a peaceful walk with their children. If the British are in the mood, perhaps they can greet them and take a photo. The “cultural activities” include tribute concerts to The Beatles and Freddie Mercury, face painting workshops, an “artisanal” market, and “themed” parades about the legend —here the translation is impossible— of Saint George and the dragon. The Saint George of Calvià, it hardly needs to be said, dispenses with any reference to Sant Jordi and to the culture and language of Calvià, Mallorca, and the Balearic Islands, which are Catalan language and culture. It is part of a political vision that considers the island a Spanish enclave, and if convenient also British, and which at the same time does not neglect to work on the tourist projection of the municipality (the only and true obsession of elites with a pathological relationship with easy money) under the sign of de-seasonality, a concept that once progressivism advocated thinking it was about better distributing tourism and its impact throughout the year, but which has ended up meaning massification and collapse for as many months as possible. For a long time, Calvià has had far-right municipal governments that also have to face, every year, a dilemma: Jaume I and his troops landed in Mallorca on September 10, 1229 in Santa Ponça, precisely within the term of Calvià, and they find it a problem to celebrate the anniversary because then they have to balance to hide that those Christians who killed Moors (good) were Catalans (very bad).The day before Saint George, on Saturday the 25th, the Book Day will be celebrated in Calvià, with stalls selling this product. Perhaps writer Mendoza will have time to stop by, as he will find in Calvià a celebration alternative to Sant Jordi very similar to the one he demanded a few days ago.

The PP has presented an amendment to a Vox motion for the first time to debate in Congress the establishment of a "national priority" when receiving aid and subsidies. This is an element that both parties agreed on in the pact signed to govern in Extremadura —although the candidate for re-election, María Guardiola, did not mention it in Tuesday's investiture debate— and which the Spanish government has already taken it upon itself to censor. The Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, in the Senate control session, stated that the pact between the right and the far-right is "discriminatory, inhumane, and xenophobic." In the Extremaduran investiture

In the Congress, everyone points out that, more and more, it seems the lions aren't just staying at the door. Last Tuesday, the one who showed his claws was José María Sánchez García, a VOX deputy since 2019, who, in the middle of a debate to document the burning of books during Francoism, and after being expelled from the session, climbed onto the table and confronted the presidency of the Congress. "The only thing I was thinking was where the slap would come from", admitted hours later the socialist Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, who at that moment was chairing the plenary session in place of Francina Armengol.

The PP and Vox have taken four months to reach an agreement in Extremadura that seems like a pact of circumstances, signed because time was running out, but which contains enough conflictive points to think they will have many problems putting it into practice. Immigration and healthcare will be the most controversial aspects, because the mentality with which these two chapters are treated is clearly restrictive of rights. The campaigns that have been launched previously to prepare the ground will not satisfy the expectations of the signatory parties. Spanish society, by a large majority, does not share the idea that immigrants are a group of criminals responsible for the saturation of public healthcare, while receiving unjustified subsidies.

Vox left all the regional coalition governments with the PP in the summer of 2024 in protest because the Popular Party accepted the arrival of 400 minors from Ceuta and the Canary Islands. It is not strange that, two years later, the immigration folder has been key to resuming the alliance with the PP, for now, in the Extremadura executive. Four months after the elections, the PP has agreed with the far-right to limit the rights of immigrants, starting by committing to reject the arrival of irregulars by all means, "legal, juridical and political", whether they are minors or adults. The government of María Guardiola will not offer new places of reception and will try to empty the current ones "working actively to return unaccompanied minors to their countries of origin". A clear declaration of intent, despite the fact that Extremadura does not have the powers to expel people from its territory.

It hasn't even been a month, on March 27, I asked myself in this analysis: “Can a socialist minister improve anything about financing?” The Valencian Arcadi España had just replaced Vice President Montero, who was leaving to run as a PSOE candidate in the Andalusian electoral campaign. We wondered if a new Minister of Finance could change anything about the distribution of money, because the new minister was perfectly aware of how poorly funded the Valencian Country is. Well, we haven't had to wait long for an answer that we hoped wouldn't have to be rhetorical.Here you have it: “The new minister does not give in and Catalonia will not collect personal income tax”. Because the minister says that any transfer in collection will be made within the framework of the state Treasury. In other words, the Spanish government continues to not embrace Esquerra's agreement with the PSC for the investiture of Salvador Illa. It will be the State agency that will continue to have the powers in management and collection, and the Catalan agency would be a collaborating entity. Well, it's lucky that this was the federalist minister and that Sánchez and Illa have great personal and political harmony. Apart from the fact that the PSOE only goes along with improvements in self-government and believes that with the amnesty enough has been done, senior officials are a state within the State and it doesn't matter whether the PP or the PSOE governs.Meanwhile, Catalonia continues to be underfunded, far below what it pays and what it needs, and there is no room for the regional tier of personal income tax to be lowered: the PSC, Esquerra, Comuns, and the CUP voted against Junts' proposal (voted by the PP, Vox, and Aliança Catalana) to reduce personal income tax and eliminate inheritance tax. Junts knew it would lose but wants to make a point with the idea that Catalans live squeezed by taxes while other autonomies can afford tax cuts.On another note, we answer a question we asked ourselves this morning in the newspaper regarding the incident with the Vox deputy who went up to threaten the acting president of Congress during a plenary session. The question is whether the incident was an anecdote or is significant. The answer is clear: this is significant, the far-right is violent by definition and needs to discredit institutions through contempt and intimidation. They know exactly what they are doing: making it seem like they are so full of reasons that they have no choice but to lose their temper in the face of injustices. And specifically, the behavior of the Vox deputy José María Sánchez, like a madman, is perfectly conscious, because he is a judge on leave from the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community. This is the level.Good morning.

Although the People's Party insists actively and passively that Vox is a party like any other to justify their pacts with them, reality shows every day that this is not the case. The incident staged by deputy José María Sánchez in the Congress of Deputies, in which he climbed the podium to shout at the then acting president of the chamber, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, at a distance of a few centimeters, had not been seen in the chamber throughout the democratic period. And perhaps the closest thing to it was on February 23, as recalled by the socialist Patxi López.

Beyond the very short-term vision that usually dominates political parties and this Wednesday's discussion in Parliament (surprise: the one who got more wet, or who spread more butter, was Orriols), the Ripoll episode, in which the municipal budgets presented by a fascist and racist party like Alianza Catalana were approved with the votes of two PSC councilors, points to the questions of a not-so-distant future. Questions like these: What policy will Catalan parties follow regarding AC, the day after the next municipal elections? Will they make a deal with it? Will they not make a deal but "consent" to receive its "external" support to invest mayors and government teams? And a little later, to approve budgets? Or will they follow (as should undoubtedly be done with fascist and/or far-right formations) a cordon sanitaire policy? The two socialist councilors have been dismissed for having contravened their party's position on this matter, and that is correct (if we're asking for things, this same speed would be appreciated, in all parties, in other internal matters, such as those affecting corruption or sexual harassment). But the reasonable doubt persists: in the next municipal elections, scheduled for 2027, all surveys and polls predict an exponential increase in votes and representation for AC, in line with the rise experienced by far-right and racist formations throughout the West (it is true that the first signs of a certain deflation are beginning to be perceived, such as Orbán's defeat in Hungary, Donald Trump's low popularity in the US, the small but significant changes of course by the opportunistic Meloni in Italy, but of course all this, as of today, means nothing concrete: talking about trend changes is premature and illusory).

The controversial reaction of Vox deputy José María Sánchez García, who confronted the presidency of Congress during the debate of a non-law proposal (PNL) on historical memory, has put the focus on the deterioration of parliamentarism. "What happened is not an anecdote. It is a way of doing politics based on noise, intimidation, and disregard for the basic rules of democratic coexistence." This is the conclusion drawn from this episode by the parties of the plurinational majority, as stated in an institutional declaration promoted this Wednesday by the PSOE. Various parliamentary sources from the parties that have signed it, consulted by ARA, agree in diagnosing that the presence of Vox in the lower house has caused a change in parliamentary life, which worsens year after year. The declaration could not be read at the end of Wednesday's plenary session because Vox, PP, and UPN refused to sign it.

The offer of punches to the mouth is quite saturated. Society is full of them, real and metaphorical, in the streets and online, so we are already served and don't need more. If we talk about political combat, a punch is better than arguments because you are left rested (though sore), but arguments have the advantage of being renewable: everyone can repeat them everywhere and, in these times —and to sustain the fight in defense of democracy—, values are more useful than impulses.

The comedian Jair Domínguez faced this morning the trial promoted by Vox against him. The far-right party reported him for an alleged hate crime for having said that

While Gabriel Rufián travels the State defending his idea of unity of the left, the right also has someone preaching the same. Less popular, retired, but capable of filling the auditorium of the select Círculo Ecuestre between his obsessions with ETA and conspiracy theories. Jaime Mayor Oreja, former Minister of the Interior and former leader of the Basque PP, who boasted in 2009 that his great-grandfather had banned Basque at home to "get out of the barn," has managed to gather leaders from the PP (Alejandro Fernández at the forefront) and Vox (Joan Garriga). All in all, to send them a message: "There is an 85% of things that unite us, let's be capable of offering an alternative".

New chapter in the soap opera of the arrest warrant against Jair Dominguez for him to appear in a trial driven by Vox. In a publication on X, the comedian explained that this Friday the Mossos d'Esquadra tried to locate him at a house where he no longer lives and also at his ex-wife's house. "Dear mossos, I am told that you passed by my old house this morning (I no longer live there) and also by my ex-wife's house. If you send me a private message, I will give you my new address so you don't go around in vain or scare the neighbors," said Dominguez in a message in which he tagged the X profile of Mossos d'Esquadra.