The agreement reached between Carlos Mazón and Alberto Núñez Feijóo to resolve the crisis involves the resignation of the president of the Generalitat and negotiations with Vox for the investiture of another deputy as a temporary solution. In other words, the Valencian PP will attempt to reach a consensus agreement with Santiago Abascal's party that would allow for the provisional investiture of another president of the Generalitat.
This has been confirmed to this newspaper by sources within the People's Party, who insist that Mazón himself will appear this Monday to explain the details of the agreement he has reached with the PP leader after a full day of negotiations.
Mazón's departure from the Generalitat was considered a foregone conclusion within the party. The PP leader himself had raised the possibility after being completely singled out at the state funeral for the victims of the DANA storm, where he was heckled and insulted in the presence of the King and Queen, as well as Feijóo himself. The Valencian leader's situation was already"untenable" for his own party.
Mazón's resignation, however, will not be accompanied by an early election, another scenario that had been considered. The Valencian president had argued to Feijóo that the polls, despite the evident decline of the PP brand, still showed the party as the winner of a hypothetical election. That said, this would come at the expense of Vox's growth.
However, sources within the Valencian leadership considered that opening a new electoral cycle in the Valencian Community now could be too risky—a"political suicide," in the words of a prominent PPCV leader—given that the left would be fully mobilized for the elections. Other sources, on the contrary, maintained that early elections would have caught both Compromís and the PSOE with their leadership under scrutiny and without much room to maneuver.
The option that has ultimately prevailed in the negotiations is to maintain the current system until 2027 with an interim president of the Generalitat. In this regard, sources consulted maintain that the current spokesperson for the PP in the Valencian Parliament, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, is the frontrunner, given his good relationship with Vox. Pérez Llorca, Mazón's right-hand man and a key figure in the party, has been instrumental in forging the main agreements with Vox: from the expedited agreement to invest Mazón as president of the Generalitat in 2023 after the May 28 elections to the budget agreements.
However, the PP will not impose any name from the outset, but will approach the negotiation with Vox with the predisposition to agree on a name, without Pérez Llorca's being non-negotiable.
In recent hours, the leadership of the Valencian PP had been pressuring the party's national headquarters in Madrid to convey the drawbacks of having the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, succeed Mazón. According to PP sources in Valencia, the mayor's candidacy—which had already been floated in the months following the devastating floods as a possible replacement for the president of the Generalitat—could end up being a high-risk move.
Catalá is also a member of the Valencian Parliament—a prerequisite for running for office—but her relationship with Vox has been marked by significant clashes in recent years. Catalá governs the Valencia City Council with Vox, albeit with a somewhat precarious majority because the Vox municipal group is fractured and split in two.
The other problem for Catalá, according to analysis within the PP, is that his departure from the City Council to take up the presidency of the Generalitat could jeopardize the PP's government in the main city of the Valencian Community. As one PP source summarized,"If Catalá goes to the Generalitat, the City Council and the Provincial Council of Valencia will fall." The party that governs the Valencia City Council usually holds the key to the Palau de la Generalitat (the seat of the Valencian government).
