In the Valencia Electoral Board controversy, a complaint from the Partido Popular Valenciana raises questions about social media posts and public aid campaigns
There is widespread anticipation about reaching the polling stations as the election cycle advances. A regulatory body received a formal complaint from PPCV this Friday, and within days more developments followed, even though more than a month remains before the deadline. In this instance, there is growing public pressure for an immediate withdrawal of two posts from official Generalitat and President Ximo Puig social networks, posts that announced the shopping cart bonus and linked to the institutional page. The offer of assistance, framed as help for vulnerable households, includes a 90-euro discount on essential food items.
The Valencia branch of the PP claims before the Electoral Board, a document the newspaper has reviewed, that these posts constitute a campaign financed with public money and breach electoral regulations designed to prevent political messaging that benefits the ruling administration. The complaint points to Article 50.2 of the Electoral Code, which prohibits certain types of political communication, arguing that the publications amount to political messaging that highlights the government’s recent achievements.
Specifically, the PP’s filing, signed by Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, Deputy Under-Secretary for the Organization within PPCV, was submitted to the Electoral College yesterday and targets two posts from April 20. One appeared on Generalitat’s Twitter account, and the other on President Puig’s Facebook page, where the aid program’s implementation was reported.
In the claim, the popular party concedes that providing information about the program’s rollout may be of public interest, but contends that the posts go beyond a neutral update. They describe the content as not merely a personal post from Puig or a simple video featuring the president discussing achievements, and they argue that the posts quantify the benefits of the measure in a way that suggests promotion.
The essence of the complaint mirrors a prior PP filing regarding tax reform advertising tied to the government’s income statement. In that earlier case, the Electoral Board partially supported the PP by limiting certain campaign elements while allowing others to proceed. The current case argues that public interest cannot justify promotional messages that resemble campaign materials, especially when they emphasize results attributed to the government in power.
According to the PP, public-interest considerations were the driving force behind the administration’s arguments in the earlier complaint about tax reform. The defense later recalled that the reform could offer discounts for taxpayers and argued that informing the public about this benefit was appropriate.
The Electoral Board, chaired by Pilar de la Oliva, rejected the PP’s request to open a disciplinary case and instead ordered an immediate cessation of the corporate campaign published on the Generalitat website. The board did not rule on the removal of the two tweets cited in the complaint.
Separately, Carlos Mazón’s party reported another twenty-one posts from the Generalitat accounts covering a range of topics—from March’s data on Metrovalencia users to initiatives aimed at increasing women’s access to research, and from the Conseil’s investments in regional regeneration to the fire incident in Villanueva de Viver—illustrating the breadth of posts under scrutiny.
[Attribution: Electoral Board proceedings and party statements summarized from public records.]