The Vox deputy in the Balearic Parliament, Agustín Buades, left the group this Friday and will remain in the Autonomous Chamber as a non-attached deputy. The decision comes at a critical moment, just five days before the extraordinary plenary session that, next Tuesday, must debate the impeachment of the president of the Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), for having broken the portrait of the republican Aurora Picornell in the chamber and those known as the “Molinar reds” – shot by the Francoists during the Twelfth Night in 1937 – while the repeal of the law on the democratic memory of the Balearic Islands was being debated. The departure of Buades leaves the extreme right with six deputies.
Buades, one of the capricious MPs who voted last January to expel the party’s president, Patricia de las Heras, and Le Senne himself from the group, threatening to leave Vox practically pulverized in Parliament, assures that his departure is a “personal decision”. The MP announced this decision a few minutes before the opening of the parliamentary registers, but made his resignation official shortly after.
In the letter, he asks to be allowed to continue working in the Social Affairs Commission, of which he was a member at Vox – in fact, he is the secretary of the Commission’s Board of Directors – and to be given material resources for his work as a deputy. Specifically, he demands “an adequate and dignified table and workplace to be able to continue exercising the right of political representation.” Buades is also part of the Citizen Participation Commission and is a substitute member of the Permanent Deputation.
Last May, Buades signed a motion in which he demands that the PP government of the Balearic Islands “contribute to the prevention of family breakdowns” through family counseling and mediation interventions. Buades is the former director of the Balearic Family Institute and, in recent years, he has harshly criticized progressive policies aimed at combating discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, considering them “an attack on freedom of thought” in matters of sexuality.
Regarding the plenary session next Tuesday, the withdrawal demanded by the left against Le Senne necessarily needs the “yes” of the PP to move forward, without abstention being enough. However, the departure of Buades does not change the balance in this sense given that a motion of this type requires three-fifths of the Chamber.
However, Buades’ vote could become relevant in other scenarios: the PP has 25 deputies, the entire left. However, the president of the government, the popular Marga Prohens, usually has the vote of the deputy from Formentera, Llorenç Córdoba, and the non-attached – and also a former deputy from Vox – Xisco Cardona.
The debate on the motion to impeach Le Senne fuels a turbulent start to the political year due to Vox’s break with the PP in the autonomies on the distribution of migrant minors. Despite Santiago Abascal’s announcement last July, the schism has not yet materialized in the Balearic Islands, where Vox has not been integrated into the government but has instead provided external support within the framework of a programmatic pact.
President Prohens had defended at the time – and has recently maintained – that the pact that Vox considers broken included the presidency of Le Senne, some words have been interpreted as a suggestion that if the extreme right broke its agreement, Le Senne should leave the presidency – in fact, Prohens said that “nothing else would be understood” -. However, the PP has tried not to reveal its cards and, so far, has refused to anticipate the meaning of its vote next Tuesday.
