The day the moderate Mañueco let go of the hand of Ciudadanos and gave it to Vox

It all started and ended on a Monday morning.

The then vice president of Castilla y León, Francisco Igea, from Ciudadanos, was being interviewed by telephone, early on December 20, 2021, on Onda Cero.

As soon as he hung up, he received the call informing him of his dismissal.

Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, president of the Junta, of the PP, broke the coalition, threw out the Cs advisers and called early elections.

At the time, he announced it on Twitter.

Internal polls gave him an absolute majority without the need for pacts;

but the polls tied him to Vox, with whom he has governed since last April amid controversies.

An experiment that constitutes the first walk in coalition of the PP with the extreme right and that raises suspicions in the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

More information

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Mañueco, who during the pandemic showed the image of a moderate agreeing on measures with the PSOE, two years later he sees how Vox alludes to the socialists as a "criminal gang".

The regional president came to power in 2019 despite the fact that his initials, for the first time in 32 years, lost the elections.

"Whatever you want," says Igea, who offered him so that Ciudadanos, who had flirted with the PSOE promising "regeneration", would agree to govern with the PP.

The then leader of Cs, Albert Rivera, ordered that his 12 parliamentarians align themselves with the 29 of Mañueco and make the 35 socialists sterile.

Thus began a "marriage of convenience", said Igea, which became a "well-matched marriage" until the traumatic divorce of 2021. The extreme right won 13 seats in those elections, to 31 for the PP,

The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, described the government agreement as a "pilot floor", an expression that annoys a critical sector of the PP that maintains that Juan García-Gallardo, the leader of the far-right party in Castilla y León, marks the speech before the passivity of the PP.

“Feijóo's PP has no sympathy with Mañueco.

He has appeared twice with the worst results in history ”, express voices close to the Galician leader.

"And in Genoa they know it: it is difficult for Feijóo to go to Castilla y León," they add.

In addition, the leader of the PP is a close friend of Juan Vicente Herrera, Mañueco's predecessor in office and who swept electorally for 18 years in the territory.

Feijóo has not included anyone related to Salamanca in his board, but he did include leaders close to Herrera.

In any case, in public

To further complicate the situation for Mañueco, the divided PP of Salamanca is in the hands of a manager, and with the 2017 primaries —which ended up elevating the current president— investigated by a judge for alleged irregular financing of the party.

Popular sources maintain that "Vox's gratuitous extravagances and tensions, with the broken social dialogue, do not benefit the community or the PP."

This newspaper has tried, without success, to obtain the opinion of Mañueco (who has used agenda reasons) and Vox on these first months of coexistence in the Executive.

Eight months after the PP-Vox link, "the bad omens" have been confirmed, according to the socialist leader in the community, Luis Tudanca.

“Not only because of Vox but because of the ideological contamination and the deteriorated institutions,” he says.

Tudanca recites negative numbers in job creation, depopulation or business production: "They are not coincidence, they are consequences, in addition to the ideological".

The National Institute of Statistics has announced this Monday that it was in Castilla y León where the GDP grew the least in 2021. And there are more fronts: Vox denies sexist violence —which has caused more than one tension with the popular— and, for example , has promoted a decree of "harmony" to replace the previous one, approved by the PP, of "historical memory".

Tudanca believes that "moderation was a band inherited from Herrera" and that the PP "was moderate."

Mañueco's former partner on the Board, Francisco Igea, jokes about the event: "It's my anniversary."

In 365 days he has gone from vice president to the sole attorney for Citizens in the Cortes.

There he often recalls the "disloyalty" of the president, whom he considers the author of "the most absurd political maneuver in the history of the community."

Former Minister of Health Verónica Casado, also from Cs, affirms that “political calculations” should not be incompatible with verbally communicating dismissals like hers, which arrived by mail in the midst of a wave of coronavirus.

“[Manueco] It is not reliable.

We have not spoken again, ”she says.

Igea lists "disasters" of these months such as the increase in waiting times in health, the highest excess mortality in Spain or bad employment data.

"He is a nonsense,

Codes of ethics have been lost and pressure is being exerted on the media”, the parliamentarian maintains.

The tension in Parliament can be seen in the fact that this year the "hemiciscos" have not been held, some informal awards from the regional press for politicians.

In 2019 Mañueco and Igea, who ended up doing the conga, won the “Hemicisco Calixto y Melibea” for “making their love story come true against all odds”.

Now Manueco faces the storms unleashed by Vox without Igea's umbrella.

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