PP and Vox seal electoral pact for Spanish Senate

The Popular Party and Vox have signed an electoral pact for the Spanish Senate after difficult weekend negotiations. The far-right party will not field its own candidates in six provinces and will run a single candidate in fourteen others.

Vox will abstain in Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cadiz, Valencia, Castellon and the Balearic Islands. It will present one candidate in Seville, Huelva, Asturias, Badajoz, Alava, Navarra, Caceres, Huesca, Zaragoza, Alicante, Granada, Cuenca, Pontevedra and Jaen. In the remaining twenty-three provinces, Vox will compete normally.

“The understanding has the objective of protecting the center-right majority in the Senate against the walls and movements of the radical left to take it away from them.”

The PP will not run in three constituencies where it has not won seats in recent years: Guipuzcoa, Girona and Tarragona. Both sides made concessions and accepted issues outside their initial plans.

The agreement aims to stop the PSOE, Sumar and territorial left-wing blocs and secure an absolute majority for the right. It also seeks three-fifths representation, which allows the appointment of members to institutions such as the General Council of the Judiciary and the Constitutional Court.

PP Secretary General Miguel Tellado called the deal good news and praised the understanding based on generosity and a sense of state. Vox leaders said the two formations are very different but share the need to remove what they called Sanchez's criminal organization from institutions.

The pact blurs the lines between the two parties, which Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez presented as a single project of involution.