Vox’s latest political crisis in Cantabria, which led to the departure of its former spokesperson Cristóbal Palacio from the far-right parliamentary group after being sanctioned for two years of activism for not attending plenary sessions and commissions, once again brought transfuguism to the Cantabrian Parliament, which for the third consecutive legislature must welcome in its chamber an unregistered deputy, who maintains his record despite abandoning the party for which he presented himself in the elections.
Up to four parliamentarians have followed the same path in just seven years: slamming the door on the acronyms with which they obtained a file in the old San Rafael hospital, declaring themselves “not attached” and abandoning their parliamentary group, but in retaining their position and, with it, all the privileges and the corresponding salary of a deputy. Furthermore, in virtually all cases there was a common component, namely that confrontations with their comrades were due to internal struggles for organic power and not strictly political or ideological decisions.
Thus, Ciudadanos twice, later Podemos and now Vox have recently been faced with this flight of deputies and the loss of their legitimate representatives in Cantabria, forcing the Autonomous Chamber to adapt its internal regulations and modify its organic process in session plenary. react to this circumstance, sometimes with much controversy, because the non-registered deputies in turn caused the dissolution of the parliamentary groups in which they were integrated, recalling more turbulent stages like those which They were experienced in the 90s, under the mandates of former President Juan Hormaechea.
Defectors Cataract
The arrival of the new emerging parties in the Cantabrian Parliament during the 2015-2019 legislature put an end to a period of certain political placidity in the Chamber, and the first deputy who broke with his party and turned into a renegade has summer Juan Ramón Carrancio, former coordinator of Ciudadanos, who left the orange formation in June 2017 with “two thirds of the activism” after the appointment sorted by Albert Rivera of the Madrid actor and comedian Félix Álvarez – better known as de Felisuco – as the highest representative of the party in the autonomous community.
At that time, Ciudadanos had two representatives in the Cantabrian Parliament in the Joint Group – because it did not reach the minimum number of deputies to have its own group – and the departure of Carrancio was very controversial because his voice was even used to certain occasions throughout the parliamentarian for the PRC-PSOE government, chaired by the regionalist Miguel Ángel Revilla, to execute the budgets, while recognizing that the former deputy of Orange was “a defector from school textbooks”. Carrancio himself was accused of having used the resources that corresponded to him as a parliamentarian to create a new political formation, OLA Cantabria, with which he participated as head of the list in the regional elections in the following call, although only with a very bad result. result which did not allow him to repeat the position.
Ciudadanos also suffered from transfuguism in its ranks during the last mandate, when regional representative Marta García announced on social networks her resignation as a member of the orange formation in May 2022, attributing this decision to her party’s vote in Senate on a proposal related to the protection of the wolf, and specifying that it was not going to submit the minutes and that it would remain in the regional Parliament until the end of the legislature. In fact, she continued to occupy a seat in the Chamber as a non-registered deputy, ignoring the requests for resignation from those who until then were her colleagues of the acronym, and causing the dissolution of the parliamentary group of Ciudadanos, which was left without the minimum number of reps to keep it.
In the case of Podemos, its only mandate in the Cantabrian Chamber was also surrounded by controversy due to the constant confrontation between its three deputies, and even ended with a complaint for workplace harassment in court. In fact, this is the reason for the breakup of the former parliamentary spokesperson, Verónica Ordóñez, who disaffiliated after the differences she had with José Ramón Blanco and Alberto Bolado, who found herself in the mixed group and moved away from the purple formation. . After accumulating two directors, three different general secretaries and judicially paralyzed primaries in just four years, Podemos lost its representation in the Cantabrian Parliament and had no chance of regaining it in the following elections.
The last to join this list of defector deputies was Cristóbal Palacio, who has had an open confrontation with his party since he was relegated from the head of the Vox list in the regional elections of Cantabria and lost the spokesperson of his parliamentary group in favor of Leticia Díaz. After only 15 months of legislature, during which the organic battle intensified, with sanctions, accusations of espionage among the deputies themselves and dismissals for harassment at work, Palacio slammed the door justifying his departure by the lack of internal democracy in training. of the far right and preserve its record. If there are no other changes in the short term, Vox maintains three deputies who can play a key role throughout the legislature, as they can guarantee an alternative majority to the PP government.
