Jácome against everyone: repeat in Ourense after failing PP and PSOE in their attempt to kick him out

Gonzalo Pérez Jácome has gotten away with it: this noon he once again raised the baton of Ourense, the third Galician city in population. He did it with the support of the ten councilors of Democracia Ourensana (DO), the most voted list, against all odds. In exchange, the PP stays with the Provincial Council, now without Baltar, his intimate enemy.

The polls gave Jácome the reason that the opposition denied him. The PP, with 7 councilors, PSOE (6) and BNG (4) agreed to block the way for a new mandate. The numbers gave but they have not been able to agree to unseat the eccentric councilor.

Jácome himself cleared up the unknown and announced it through his social networks shortly before the investiture session, which took place this afternoon. “The DO representatives will vote for themselves in the constitution of the Council and the Provincial Council”. At the same time, the Ourense PP did the same on Twitter confirming that there would be no pact and that its councilors would vote for themselves. The surprise was given by the BNG: its four councilors supported the PSOE candidate, Francisco Rodriguez, who obtained 10 supports. He tied in votes with Jácome (10) but it was insufficient to unseat him as DO was the list with the most votes.

“It has been a very hectic 24 hours and I have not focused on preparing the speech,” said the councilor after being sworn in. “In this plenary session, there are winners and losers and it is a reflection of life,” he proclaimed, thanking “the honor” of being mayor. “I was always my own boss but now I know that I have 100,000 bosses,” he said in reference to the Ourense citizens.

Thus ended a few weeks of vertigo and maneuvers with all the formations trying to fit a puzzle in which Jácome always had the missing piece and the upper hand.. The councilor from Ourense held discreet meetings with the leadership of the PPdeG -Paula Prado- and the PSOE -José Manuel Lage-, demonstrating that he swallowed bile and would negotiate “with the devil”, as he himself proclaimed, if necessary to continue commanding the city de las Burgas, where it arrived unexpectedly four years ago, being the third force in votes through a controversial pact with the PP of the then almighty José Manuel Baltar.

Ironically, Baltar has been the great defeated. He has had to get out of the middle squeezed by his own party with meager electoral results in the most peppery province, putting an end to three decades of dynasty in the Ourense Provincial Council, gripped by his pending accounts with the Justice: a trail of speeding tickets and other scandals. It remains to be seen if it is his political end or if he still has an ace up his sleeve.

Eccentric, atypical, unpredictable and with frequent outbursts, not even the audios in which he supposedly bragged about money laundering, collecting commissions and B payments have made a dent in his electorate although the Prosecutor's Office has him on the radar for possible crimes of prevarication, bribery , embezzlement and influence peddling.

Cities that change hands

Which Galician cities have changed hands? Few actually: two out of seven. Vigo, A Coruña and Lugo for the socialists, Santiago and Pontevedra for the nationalists, Ferrol for the PP and Ourense for Jácome, with their own rules. A very disappointing result for the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo that denotes his problem: the popular Galicians are choking on the urban and Atlantic vote in one of their granary communities.

The main novelty is that Santiago will have a female mayor and a nationalist for the first time: Goretti Sanmartín takes command and marks a red line: put a stop to runaway tourism of pilgrims in the Galician capital. It will go hand in hand with Compostela Aberta – the tide of Martiño Noriega who governed in 2015 and reduced his presence to two councilors – and retires the former mayor Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, a historic socialist who obtained bad results, resigned from the act and requests passage in the Senate.

Another change: Ferrol. The smallest of the seven cities and the only one that has returned to the hands of the PP with an absolute majority but by the minimum. A mayor returns who was already a mayor between 2011 and 2015: Jose Manuel Rey Varela, a personal friend of Núñez Feijóo and Alfonso Rueda, -president of the Xunta present today at the investiture- who has spent a lifetime in politics and is moving away from the Xunta to return to a complex and fragmented city between the worker and union left and the right of Casino heir to the Navy, which changes hands systematically every four years.

At 76 years old, Abel Caballero has no one to shadow him in Vigo and he is not making any threat of retiring either, so he will govern again with a comfortable absolute majority. Without a majority, repeat the socialist mayors of Lugo, Lara Méndez – who reissues her pact with the BNG – and Inés Rey, in A Coruña, who will do so in a minority to the chagrin of the nationalists who today supported her investiture.

Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores (BNG) is on his way to a record in Pontevedra, the most walkable city in Spain, which he has governed since 1999. He begins his sixth consecutive term at the age of 69, although he will have to resort to the PSOE in plenary sessions. However, this 28M showed wear and tear and the PP has not lacked to pass it by.