Embattled Valencia president Carlos Mazon says ‘no’ to illegal migrants after striking budget deal with far-right Vox party – CSN News

Carlos Mazon, president of VALENCIA, says that his region will not accept any more illegal migrants in temporary immigration centres funded by the national government.

The announcement on Monday coincided with the signing of a deal between his Partido Popular government and the extreme-right Vox to pass the budget for 2025 through the Valencian Parliament.

The regional leader, who is under fire for the way he handled the October flood disaster, has been battling massive criticism.

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Carlos Mazon declared: “The Valencian Community exceeded its capacity, and will no longer accept illegal immigrants distributed by the Pedro Sanchez administration.”

He added that like other regions, ‘Valencia has a problem with illegal migration and with mafias that take advantage of the problem to do business while generating social unrest’.

The Valencian leader commented that he ‘agreed’ with Vox in rejecting the national government’s migration policy.

He said: “Our centers are saturated, and it’s clear that mass illegal migration needs to be addressed with a new immigration policy at the national and European levels.”

He added: “We need to accelerate the expulsion of illegal immigrants.”

Mazon’s decision is a break from the Partido Popular in Spain, as it works with the socialist government to house migrants who arrive on the Canary Islands.

Ironically, it was this issue that caused a lot of friction for Vox leader Santiago Abascal when he ordered his party to withdraw from regional government coalitions last summer.

The parliamentary spokesperson for the left-wing Valencian Compromis party, Joan Baldovi, described Mazon as a ‘political corpse’ and attacked him for ‘grovelling to the extreme right’ to get his budget passed.

Baldovi said his comments were ‘indescribable’ and that he was ‘ashamed’ to hear them.

He also cast Vox’s stance as that of a ‘traitorous’ party that was giving ‘oxygen’ to Mazon and ‘betraying the interests of Valencians’ purely for electoral advantage.