Vox leader Santiago Abascal has warned the Partido Popular (PP) that his party is ready to leave regional coalition governments if existing agreements are not fully respected. Speaking in Madrid, he was joined by Oscar Fernández Calle, regional vice president of Extremadura. Alejandro Nolasco of Aragón and Carlos Pollán of Castilla y León also took part. Abascal said Vox would closely monitor the implementation of coalition deals in all three autonomous communities. He urged regional leaders to be ready to leave government if they face further obstacles or breaches, pointing to Vox’s decision to quit PP-led regional executives in July 2024.
That rupture followed the PP’s acceptance of a redistribution of unaccompanied migrant minors from the Canary Islands to other Spanish regions. At the time, Vox was part of the governments of Castilla y León, the Comunitat Valenciana, Extremadura, Aragón and Murcia, and supported the PP administration externally in the Balearic Islands. Abascal ordered Vox ministers and vice presidents to leave the executives, but the party generally kept its parliamentary-presidency positions and many municipal agreements. The departures ended coalition arrangements without automatically ending every form of cooperation between the parties.
The stakes are impressive: PP and Vox have since reached governing agreements in four regions. These are Extremadura and Aragón, as well as Castilla y León and Andalucía. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has described the arrangements as working and said the parties now have a “clear structure” for negotiations and red lines. Vox holds senior portfolios linked to deregulation and social services, with family policy also in its remit. Extremadura created a vice-presidency and a Department of Deregulation, Social Services and Family for the party. In Aragón, Nolasco holds the vice-presidency for deregulation, social welfare and family, while Pollán has a vice-presidential role in Castilla y León connected to deregulation and family policy. A withdrawal could force cabinet reshuffles or leave a PP government relying on support from outside the executive.
Abascal called this the most challenging period for Vox, citing its new government responsibilities and the scrutiny it faces ahead of the next general elections, expected within a year. He urged colleagues to uphold the party’s principles and implement agreed policies firmly, despite Vox’s position as the junior coalition partner. Feijóo, by contrast, has pointed to lessons from failed arrangements and newer agreements, saying: “We now have experience of what has worked and what has not.”
Vox’s deregulation programme, presented in Madrid, draws on the policies of Argentine President Javier Milei, whom Abascal recently met. Milei has claimed to have repealed 16,000 regulations. Vox has set no comparable overall target, but proposes eliminating three regulations for every new one introduced. The party says the plan would cut what it calls administrative “red tape” and make deregulation part of regional government, rather than leave it as an electoral pledge.
The proposals would roll back workplace requirements, including rules on equality and LGTBI plans. They also target working-time records, sustainable mobility plans and digital-disconnection protocols. Vox proposes tailoring workplace risk-prevention plans to individual companies and reforming the Workers’ Statute. Its broader programme would create a nationwide economic licence to unify the Spanish market, extend positive administrative silence with exceptions for nationality and immigration procedures, and remove prior-appointment requirements in official processes. It also calls for a single database, so citizens would not have to resubmit documents already held by public administrations. The proposals cover areas governed at different levels of Spain’s public administration, so implementation would depend on the legislation and authorities responsible for each policy area.
The party’s agenda also calls for repealing laws on housing and climate change, along with labour reform. It would amend rules on energy and taxation, as well as industry and data protection. Vox has proposed stripping the data protection agency of its sanctioning powers and changing whistleblower-protection legislation. The proposals reach beyond administrative simplification into labour and environmental policy, alongside housing and oversight. Changes in those areas would directly affect businesses, public bodies and service users.
At the programme’s presentation, Vox secretary general Ignacio Garriga highlighted what he called the party’s record of “zero corruption cases.” The party’s accounts for the previous year were ratified online with 98.2% approval. In response to criticism from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Abascal defended the transfer of €13.9 million over six years from Vox to the Disenso foundation, where he serves as president and permanent trustee. He said Disenso’s mission is to monitor “communists, drug traffickers, and criminals” in Latin America and indicated plans to increase funding for the foundation in 2025.
Garriga also defended Vox’s “national priority” policy, which restricts immigrants’ access to public aid and services. He argued that it is a matter of social justice, not racism or xenophobia. He criticised business groups and unions for opposing the policy, and also took aim at elements of the Catholic Church hierarchy. At the party’s annual assembly, Abascal intensified his criticism of Sánchez and used harsh language to describe the prime minister’s leadership.
Vox’s July 2024 departures are the clearest precedent for its latest warning. They also show that leaving an executive does not necessarily end negotiations over budgets or parliamentary support, or other agreements. The practical impact of another withdrawal would depend on the terms of each regional arrangement and on whether Vox also withdrew legislative support. The party holds senior responsibilities in four regional agreements, so a dispute could affect both government stability and the policies negotiated by coalition partners.
PP and Vox governing arrangements have featured in several Spanish regions since 2023, with repeated disputes over policy priorities and the boundaries of the political right. Vox’s proposed expansion of “administrative silence” concerns a legal mechanism under which certain requests may be treated as approved if an authority does not respond within a prescribed period. The deregulation programme and the coalition warning converge on a basic political question: can the parties turn their agreements into policy while keeping enough trust to hold their regional governments together?
