Valencian Nationalist Bloc

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The Valencian Nationalist Bloc (Bloc Nacionalista Valencià, BLOC or BNV) is a nationalist party of Land of Valencia which was created in 1998. It was constituted from the federation of several parties after a coalition which run an election in 1995. This group of parties were constituted by Unitat del Poble Valencià (UPV, founded in 1982 and with precedents in the democratical transition in Spain after Francoism), Valentian Nationalist Party (1990), Alcoi Nationalists (1994) among other independent little parties.

It is currently led by Enric Morera.

In contrast to Unió Valenciana, BLOC and its forebears support the concept of Catalanism, cooperation among the Catalan countries, and greater autonomy -if not independence itself- from Spain.

In the Left-Right axis, BLOC started historically being a left-winged party. This shifted to more center positions in the late nineties as an attempt to appeal a broader audience. The trend today seems to be reversed back again to a more leftist agenda as there are contacts with EUPV (federated with Izquierda Unida) to achieve an agreement which would take these two parties in coalition in the next regional elections (due in 2007), so that both parties would secure their representation.

As for representation, BLOC has never reached it by itself at the autonomous Land of Valencia Parliament (not by itself, but it did enjoyed a brief representation in a previous coalition with EUPV) due to the current threshold of 5% of votes required to enter this Parliament. The BLOC has historically moved around 4% of the votes in this Autonomous Community and the subject of the 5% threshold in the Valentian Parliament is traditionally a hot one in Land of Valencia's politics due to the important consequences in terms of political alliances that the BLOC access to the Parliament would imply, namely a big coalition PSOE-BLOC-EUPV which would oust the Partido Popular (PP) from the regional government or Generalitat Valenciana. Currently PP is enjoying its second consecutive absolute majority in this Parliament and claims Land of Valencia as one of its strongholds in the Spanish context.

Despite not being present at the regional Parliament, BLOC has some political strongholds in the local level and is an important political agent in some areas, being the most important the one which comprises the further north part of the Alicante province and the further south part of the Valencia one.