Valencian Union

Unión Valenciana (in Valencian, Unió Valenciana; UV) was a Spanish political party from Valencia, traditionally considered regionalist, although in 2008 it came to define itself as nationalist, a term that it had rejected until then to avoid being confused with "independence movements". Throughout its history it was associated with positions related to conservative populism and the anti-Catalanism, his formation having oscillated between a regionalism linked to Spanish nationalism and a more centrist Valencian "proto-nationalism". Since 2011 he was "united in the same project"; with the Popular Party, maintaining a minimal structure, until in mid-2014 it ceased to function completely, although without formalizing its legal dissolution.

Its political sphere was the Valencian Community. However, the greatest support from him was traditionally obtained in the province of Valencia, with discrete results in Castellón and without success in Alicante. It had its greatest success in the late 1980s and early 1990s (under the leadership of Vicente González Lizondo): UV had representation in the Congress of Deputies and the Valencian Parliament, as well as significant municipal representation (especially that of Valencia), with many mayoralties in the Valencian Community. His rapprochement with the Popular Party during the 1990s, which culminated in the arrival of the PP to the Valencia mayor's office and the presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana thanks to the so-called Chicken Pact, the death of Vicente González Lizondo, and the management of the leaders Subsequently, they caused the party to progressively decrease its implantation, until it descended to testimonial electoral results.

History and ideology

Foundation and growth (1982-1986): the Popular Coalition.

In 1977 the Unió Regional Valencianista (URV) was founded, a party that brought together all the Valencianism contrary to the Fusterian theses, regardless of the ideology of its members; Miguel Ramón Izquierdo (who was one of its leaders and the last mayor under the Franco regime in Valencia) and Vicente González Lizondo were active in this party, among others. However, after the First Congress of the URV in October 1979, the most progressive and nationalist current prevailed by a majority, leading to a refounding of the party in which it changed its name to Esquerra Nacionalista Valenciana and a good part of its ideology., adopting a strongly leftist and nationalist line. This caused the departure of the most conservative and regionalist sector, headed by Miguel Ramón Izquierdo himself.

On November 1, 1980, they met at the premises of the "Valencia-2000" representatives of various cultural entities that formed a "Junta Permanent d'Unio Valenciana", with the intention of unifying all Valencianism, of which Miguel Ramón Izquierdo, Vicente Ramos (representative for the province de Alicante), Salvador Llácer Baixauli (representative for the province of Castellón), Francesc Domingo Ibáñez (president of Valencia 2000), Pasqual Martín Villalba (president of the Grup d'Accio Valencianista), Francisco Nieto Edo (president of the Coordinadora d& #39;Entitats Culturals del Regne de Valéncia) and Francisco Giner Mengual (representative of the Lliga Internacional d'Ensenyança).

In December 1980, Miguel Ramón Izquierdo remarked that Unió Valenciana was a cultural movement that brought together some fifty Valencian entities "in defense of the identity of the Valencian people to defend the non-negotiable character of the symbols, the denomination of the Kingdom of Valencia, the Valencian anthem, the Royal Señera, respect for the provinces and the existence of two languages, Valencian and Castilian". Ramón Izquierdo and Vicente Ramos also reported that Unió Valenciana had been born without the intention of becoming a political party, but they warned that if the parties two politicians did not make a Valencian and Valencianist policy, the Valencianist movement would create its own party.

After two years of associative activity, and before the imminent call for early general elections in full decomposition of the ruling party UCD, Unión Valenciana became a political party on August 30, 1982. This new party emerged as heir to the anti-Catalan movement of the period known, during the Spanish Transition, as the Battle of Valencia with the purpose of vindicating the "Valencian identity". The party was founded, among others, by Vicente González Lizondo, María Dolores García Broch and Miguel Ramón Izquierdo.

Its first electoral participation took place in the 1982 general elections in a coalition with the Popular Alliance and the Popular Democratic Party, obtaining two seats. This coalition was maintained in the first regional elections held in 1983.

Auge (1986-1999): the parliamentary period.

Already alone, he presented himself to the general elections of 1986 where he obtained a deputy certificate in the person of its president and founder, Miguel Ramón Izquierdo. After this fact, an electoral consolidation effect was produced that led him to improve his results, obtaining two deputies in the 1989 general elections, anticipated by his results in the 1989 European Parliament elections, in which he obtained 116,575 votes (6.79 %) leading the candidacy of the Federation of Regional Parties, and becoming the third Valencian political force in the autonomous elections of 1991 with more than 10% of the votes. In this year's local elections, he became the third force in the city of Valencia, against a Popular Party councillor, who with the support of UV snatched the mayoralty from the list with the most votes, that of the PSOE.

List of UV CCV to the 1995 local elections in the municipality of Valencia.

The decisive point in her political career occurred after the regional elections of 1995 when, despite a drop in her results, the victory of the PP with a simple majority made her fundamental for the governability of the Valencian Community. After the signing of the so-called Pacto del Pollo, UV joined the government of the PP in the Generalitat Valenciana and achieved the Presidency of the Valencian Parliament.

However, within the party, Lizondo's position was weakened, surely due to his state of health, as evidenced by the fainting he suffered in the Cortes and the distancing from the principles that originated the birth of this party. Forced by circumstances, González Lizondo, who shortly before had expelled the youth from the party, Joventut Valencianista, considering them too nationalist, ceded the presidency of the party to the president of the Cortes Héctor Villalba, who was not considered anti-Catalanist and even shared certain ideas with political Valencianism within the context of the third way of Valencian nationalism. The dispute would end with Lizondo's expulsion from the party in November 1996. Lizondo would die a month after his expulsion.

This situation was taken advantage of by the Popular Party, which began a process of engulfing UV through which numerous UV leaders (among them the agriculture counselor María de los Ángeles Ramón-Llin) gradually passed to the PP ranks. Other UV leaders, on the other hand, remained faithful to the project until their disappearance from public life, such as Héctor Villalba, who was president of the Valencian Parliament, the Valencia City Councilor, Társilo Piles, or the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Salvador Ortells..

Decline (1999-2007): the municipal period.

As a result of all this, the Valencian Union of Héctor Villalba lost parliamentary representation in the regional elections of 1999, when its electoral results fell to 4.76% of the votes, which, because it was below the electoral list of 5%, prevented him from having representation. Alternativa Valenciana also attended these elections, a group made up of people related to the figure of the late González Lizondo who had not joined the PP, obtaining 0.28% of the votes. The sum of both would have meant 5.04%, which would have allowed UV to obtain three regional deputies and maintain its parliamentary representation until 2003.

This electoral defeat was followed by others, and since then it has never had representation except at the local level. When Villalba resigned, the presidency of the party passed into the hands of José María Chiquillo, who would return UV to his original ideological postulates. To improve the electoral results in the 2003 elections, they grouped with regionalist parties, although they did not manage to exceed the threshold of 5% of votes necessary to obtain representation in the Valencian Parliament.

Finally, in the 2004 general elections they gave up presenting a list to Congress in exchange for the inclusion of José María Chiquillo as an independent on the lists for the Popular Party Senate.

Due to traumatic internal elections, Chiquillo left the party, taking with him the act of senator, generating a deep institutional crisis within the Valencian Union, which was led by Joaquín Ballester Sanz, councilor for the Valencian town of Paterna. At the end of April 2006, Joaquín Ballester resigned and after an assembly held in May of the same year, the councilor of Náquera, José Manuel Miralles, was elected as the new national president of the party.

Breakdown (2007-2014).

In 2007, the party rejected an electoral coalition with Coalición Valenciana for the regional elections of that year, running instead with Los Verdes-Ecopacifistas and Unión de Centro Liberal, obtaining only 22,615 votes (0.9%), well below the 72,594 (3%) harvested in the 2003 elections, but above the results of the ultra party. They did not stand in the 2008 general election. After failing to stand in the 2008 general elections, Unió Valenciana stood alone in the 2009 European elections, under the slogan "Trau-li punta a Europa". He obtained 6,072 votes (0.04% of the votes for candidacies), of which 3,664 (0.35%) came from the province of Valencia, where he was the eighth political force.

In 2011, he announced that he would not stand in the regional and municipal elections of that year due to lack of economic financing and the loss of militants. The Valencian Union had never failed in regional and municipal elections since 1987.

In April 2011, Miralles and Francisco Camps appeared together to announce the union of the UV and PP projects. In response to these statements, the general secretary, Luís Melero, announced that they would try to expel Miralles from the party to try to that the acronyms were absorbed by the Popular Party. Meanwhile, UV councilors and militants who wanted to stand in the 2011 local elections announced their presence on lists of other parties, mainly Units x Valéncia, which fully absorbed the collectives of Carcagente, Torrente and others, at the same time that they presented, in their Silla list, the general secretary of the Valencian Union, Lluís Melero. There were also militants who went to the PP, CDL, the PSD and Coalició Valenciana, but to a lesser extent.

In June 2011, in compensation for the support provided during the electoral campaign, Francisco Camps appointed José Manuel Miralles General Director of Statutory Development, a position he holds simultaneously to the presidency of UV.

Before the 2011 general elections, in September 2011 the youth of the party began a campaign to attract the necessary endorsements to be able to present their candidacies, against the criteria of Miralles. Finally, the party did not obtain sufficient endorsements and could not appear in any constituency, and on this occasion it did not recommend the vote for any other party. From that moment on, the party's activity became merely testimonial, with the sole purpose of maintaining theoretically active a party of which Miralles would continue to be president.

In June 2014, the new regional president Alberto Fabra removed José Manuel Miralles from his position as general director. Since that date, the party, even subsisting legally, has been completely inactive, closing its headquarters and its website and without its already few militants meeting again.^{[citation required]}

Election results

Notes:

-In 1982 he appeared within the Popular Coalition, together with the Popular Alliance and the Popular Democratic Party.

-Between 1986 and 2000 he performed solo.

-In 2004 he requested the vote for the Popular Party and José María Chiquillo was elected senator as an independent within the lists of this party.

-In 2008 and 2011 he did not appear in the general elections, and did not request the vote for any other party.

Notes:

-In 1983, he joined the Popular Coalition, together with Alianza Popular, Partido Demócrata Popular and Unión Liberal.

-Between 1987 and 2003 he performed solo.

-In 1991, Miquel Ramón Quiles from UV was elected senator by regional designation.

-In 1995 Vicente González Lizondo is elected president of the Valencian Parliament, and the party governs in coalition with the PP.

-In 1999, he would have obtained two deputies for the province of Valencia and one for the province of Castellón if the legal minimum of 5% of the total votes did not exist to obtain deputies.

-In 2003 he would have obtained a deputy for Valencia if that minimum limit did not exist.

-In 2007 he presented himself as the leader of the Unió coalition, together with Los Verdes-Ecopacifistas and Unión de Centro Liberal.

-In 2011 he did not show up and request the vote for the Popular Party.

Splits

RV ballot. Municipal elections of 1995.

Since the early 1990s, UV began to suffer numerous splits and militant leaks, resulting in the founding of a dozen new parties with little electoral result:

• Unió Nacionalista Valenciana, 1990. It was presented to the elections to the Valencian Courts in 1991, with 2,248 votes (0.1%), on a list headed by Antonio García Carpio, and to the local elections of the same year, with 1,215 votes (0.06%), obtaining two toilets. After these elections, training disappeared.
• Renovated Valencianista, 1994 (Dolores García Broch and Joan Ignasi Culla). In the 1995 local elections, it reached 2,248 votes, obtaining a governer. Integrated in the Valencian Coalition in 2005.
• Initiative of Progrés de la Comunitat Valenciana, 1997 (Miguel Zaragozá). Integrated in PP in 1998.
• Alternative Valencia, 1998 (Rafael Navarro). Reintegrated in Unió Valenciana in 2005.
• Identity of the Kingdom of Valencia, 2000 (Miguel Zaragozá). Integrated in the Valencian Coalition in 2005, reintegrated in Valencia in 2007, and again independent since 2008.
• Regional Party of the Valencian Community, 2002. (José Manuel Ricart). Integrated in the Valencian Coalition in 2005.
• Opció Nacionalista Valenciana, 2005 (Carles Choví). Refounded as Units x Valéncia in 2008.
• He joined Progrés per la Comunitat Valenciana, 2005 (José María Chiquillo). Integrated in the PP in 2008.
• Acció Nacionalista Valenciana, 2006 (Miquel Real). The party remains active.
• UNIO, 2011 (Raul Cerdà). It is presented as the natural successor party of Unió Valenciana, maintaining a similar name and the logo with which it took place in the last electoral calls in which it participated.