Vox responds to the PP saying it will not take "one step back" and threatens to force a budget extension.

PalmThe PP and Vox are once again on the verge of a fight. Vox's secretary general, Ignacio Garriga, arrived in Palma this Wednesday after the PP has issued three warnings to the far right in the last week. First, they warned that they will extend the 2025 budget if Vox raises its demands in the negotiations; then they asserted that they will not touch the Minimum Decree or the Language Normalization Law; and last Monday, they rejected their bill to introduce Spanish as a medium of instruction in schools. Garriga responded forcefully to this situation. "Vox will not take a single step back," he said, in defending Spanish in schools. "If the budget must be extended, it will be extended," he insisted.

Garriga urged the PP to "review" the agreement between the two parties to expand the use of Spanish in education. "It's very clear," he emphasized, surrounded by Vox leaders in the Balearic Islands. The PP, on the other hand, rejected the bill last Monday. to ensure that Spanish is the vehicular language in the classroom, considering that the article "overrides the Decree of Minimums" and crosses the red lines of the Popular Party. "We have not done anything that we have not signed with the PP," Garriga stated.

Vox is a party with a vertical structure, in which Madrid leads the negotiations in all institutions, including the regional ones. Garriga has warned that he will do "whatever it has to do with the PP" so that "those who want to be served by the Administration, to educate their children in a vehicular language that is the language of all Spaniards, can do so." "Vox has not come to defraud the Spanish people, much less to betray a pact signed with a political party," he stated.

The Government interprets this as a gesture

For now, sources within the Catalan government interpret Garriga's remarks as a gesture to raise their profile among voters. "In August, they disappeared, the PP monopolized the discourse on migration issues, and they're having a fit of anger," these sources explain. It is in this context that they frame the fact that Vox began the political year demanding the repeal of the Memory Law and now returns to the charge with Catalan: "It's to regain visibility." For now, President Marga Prohens's meetings with the parliamentary group have been cordial; the PP plans to advance its legislative agenda and present bills such as the Coastal Law. "If there have to be clashes in the votes, they will come," these sources point out. In fact, last Tuesday's plenary session began with the image of PP spokesperson Sebastià Sagreras and Vox spokesperson Manuela Cañadas entering the chamber hand in hand. "If the national leadership of Vox is seeking a clash, it is in a somewhat artificial way," they point out. Be that as it may, there was no meeting between Garriga and the PP this Wednesday.