The Extremadura elections this Sunday have yielded two clear conclusions for the People's Party (PP). The first is that Alberto Núñez Feijóo is very likely to become the next Spanish president. The second, and more unsettling for the PP headquarters in Madrid, is that Santiago Abascal is equally likely to become vice president. In short, the left is losing ground, but the beneficiary is not the PP but Vox, which is capturing the most anti-Sánchez vote and, at the same time, the most anti-establishment vote—the vote of those who feel forgotten and want no more palliative measures but a complete overhaul. This angry vote is concentrated in rural areas and among young people, especially boys. Therefore, the person who should be most concerned about the Extremadura results right now is Juanma Moreno Bonilla of Andalusia, who will be gambling everything on his absolute majority in June. Sociologically, Extremadura is the region most similar to Andalusia. In Aragon, which holds elections on February 8, polls predict a similar growth for Vox as in Extremadura, which would leave Jorge Azcón in the same weak position he is in now. And in Castile and León, an absolute majority for Alfonso Fernández Mañueco in the March elections is unthinkable due to the fragmentation of the regional parliament and the rise of Vox. Therefore, the most important elections will be those in Andalusia, because if Moreno Bonilla loses his majority and is forced to form a coalition with Vox, Feijóo will also lose his main political supporter in the run-up to the general elections.

The president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, decided to call early regional elections in response to the blockade imposed by Vox. It was a risky gamble, a coin toss, and it backfired. The PP only managed to gain one more seat, bringing their total to 28, far short of the five needed for an absolute majority. This occurred against a backdrop of total collapse for the PSOE, which lost 10 seats, dropping from 28 to 18. Meanwhile, the far right emerged strongest from these elections, gaining 6 seats and increasing its representation from 5 to 11. The left-wing coalition, Unidas por Extremadura, also saw significant gains.

If just a decade ago, on the 40th anniversary of Francisco Franco's death, someone had told us that by the 50th anniversary a far-right political force that celebrates his legacy would be setting the pace of Spanish politics, we probably wouldn't have believed it. But that's exactly what's happening. On the eve of the dictator's fiftieth anniversary, Vox occupies the center of the Spanish political debate for several reasons, but the main one is that it is clearly influencing the actions of the main opposition party, the PP. The PP is currently negotiating with Vox to invest a new president of the Valencian Generalitat, and in five weeks, early elections will be held in Extremadura precisely because the president, María Guardiola, wants to stop depending on the far right. The president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, finds himself in a similar situation, having been left without a budget by Vox. But the fact is that all the actions of the PP's regional leaders, from Juanma Moreno Bonilla, who is holding elections in June, to Marga Prohens in the Balearic Islands, and including Isabel Díaz Ayuso, are carried out with one eye on Santiago Abascal's party, whether to seduce it or absorb it. And then there's the case of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who after three years as PP president has still not been able to define a clear party line for dealing with Vox. This leads him to endorse seemingly contradictory strategies, such as that of the Valencian PP, willing to adopt the far-right's positions to retain power, and those of Guardiola and Moreno Bonilla, who want to distance themselves. And there is still a third way, that of the Ayuso-Aznar tandem, which seeks to absorb Vox to reunify the right-wing space.

Crisis management experts always recommend acting quickly and decisively to prevent a crisis from dragging on longer than expected or creating new ones. This is precisely what happened in the Valencian Community with the resignation of Carlos Mazón as president of the Generalitat after being publicly humiliated by the victims' families at the state funeral held for the first anniversary of the devastating floods. Mazón announced his resignation, but surprisingly, and after a whole weekend of consultations between him and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, no one announced who would replace him. A week later, Valencians still don't know who the candidate for investiture will be and, therefore, who will be their highest public representative. Mazón's resignation, which was intended to end one crisis, has opened another in the form of an internal power struggle within the Valencian PP, as well as between the Valencian PP and the national party headquarters in Madrid, over who should succeed him. The disarray within the Valencian PP is so profound that its general secretary and candidate to replace Mazón, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, has asked Feijóo to appoint the candidate himself to avoid a complete mess. In Valencia, they believe the only way to prevent a fratricidal war between the different factions is for Madrid to decide. But, as it happens, Feijóo once again refuses to make a decision. And Vox is exploiting his indecision to highlight that the problem for Valencian governance is not them, but the PP.

Twenty-four hours after Alberto Núñez Feijóo stated at the PP congress that his preference is a solo government open to agreements with everyone except Bildu, the party's new secretary general, Miguel Tellado, sought to elevate what was merely a wish into a firm electoral commitment not to share a government with the far right. "There will be no coalition government," he said in a conversation with reporters. The fact that this commitment was made the day after the congress and not during the conclave, as would have been logical, and that Tellado did not want to verbalize it on camera, undermines the credibility of the announcement. What's worse, it demonstrates that the PP still has no clear position on the matter. So much so that the new PP spokesperson, Esther Muñoz, had not ruled out, shortly before Tellado's remarks, the possibility of Santiago Abascal eventually becoming Feijóo's vice president. "We'll have to wait and see the numbers," she had said.

When the PP was on the verge of winning the Moncloa elections in July 2023, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party had at least one reason for hope: they had pushed Vox back a total of 19 seats—from 52 to 33. This led them to believe that over the course of the legislative period, they could erode the far-right party by convincing their electorate that only concentrating their votes on the PP could guarantee Pedro Sánchez's defeat in the future.

This week's budget pact between Vox and Mazón has two winners and one loser. The first are Abascal's party and the Valencian president himself, who have achieved their goals. And the second is Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who has once again been overtaken by events and forced to bless a pact cooked up behind his back and goes beyond what he would have wanted on environmental, agricultural, and immigration issues.

1. The pact. Mazón's shamelessness and Feijóo's indolence have caused the Valencian crisis to leap into mainstream politics. In a state of denial, Mazón hasn't had the dignity to go home, nor has Feijóo the authority to make him back down. Abascal has seized the opportunity. He has laid out the program: climate denial, firmness against immigration, marginalization of the Valencian language, not a euro in the historical memory. Vox proposes it, Mazón signs it, and the PP leadership validates it. The step has been taken. This isn't occasional parliamentary support; it's a government pact. The PP officially opens its alliance with Vox, seemingly indifferent to the threats of the moment. Feijóo, busy as always looking for ideas to ridicule Sánchez, which is his way of understanding the role of the opposition, wasn't even the one who confirmed the strategic shift. He simply applauded Mazón's pact. Applying his trademark policy of least effort, Feijóo embraces an alliance that breaks the democratic front and shapes the party's future. No more ambiguities. Vox is the PP's priority partner, making the conditions clear from the outset. A warning that the other parties cannot ignore.

In Esquerra they accept the solution of postponing the comprehensive transfer of Cercanías Two years, and in the PSC too, of course, with the argument that they couldn't make the transfer with the workers against it and because the Generalitat doesn't have enough staff for the trains right now. Since the PSOE-ERC agreement is from November 2023, that is, a year and four months ago, it seems they haven't had time to integrate the workers without the need for this extension. Then, in November 2023, they told us "Renfe will no longer be part of the lives of the citizens of Catalonia." Well, a year and four months later, like in Monterroso's tale, every day when we wake up, the Renfe dinosaur is still there. In other words, the workers are protected, but the service yesterday was once again a disaster, with delays and cancellations as if there were a strike. Yesterday, on TV3, Oriol Junqueras said that if the PSOE doesn't comply with the agreements, it won't have a budget for 2026. So? This is dangerous. We've already normalized the idea of punishing a government by cutting its budget. But it's the people who are being punished.

The Valencian right and far right are currently imploding due to internal disputes, management errors and a hellish parliamentary arithmetic. The president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, is currently the main problem of the bloc that won the regional and municipal elections of 2023 and rushed to occupy all the positions of power where PP and Vox added up. Mazón remains in his place surrounded by a small group of faithful, but both the state leadership and some internal factions of the party in Valencia have already begun to move because they consider him too heavy a burden to face the next elections with guarantees. Vox has also opened up to looking for a solution because it fears being dragged down by Mazón's discredit, since each time they must be the ones to save his skin in Les Corts, as will presumably happen if the PSPV finally presents a motion of censure. It is not ruled out that, depending on what happens in the next few days, we will see Vox asking for the head of Mazón.

Do you want the boys and girls of the Valencian Community (not the Valencian Country) to receive school education in the language that we have been prohibiting for centuries by all means, including violent ones, until we have lost its value in use; a language that we have persecuted to give its speakers a complex and make them believe that they spoke a dialect, ignoring the existence of Ausiàs March, Joanot Martorell, Joan Fuster or Raimon, and that we have turned into a language marked as problematic in contrast to the normal one, and about which we have lied to their conscience. Of this same language in other territories (not countries) of separatists in order to avoid the danger that they might come to believe members of a national identity differentiated from the Castilian-Spanish, which is the only mission that has moved us, moves us and will move us to offer new glories in Spain, while with the other hand we do business? Say No in any linguistic imposition. Check the box for the No.