The 'popular' Marta Maroto has assumed the Mayor's Office of the Toledo town of La Guardia this Saturday after receiving the support of the three councilors of the Non-Assigned Group, who stood for Podemos in the municipal elections and who have been expelled from the purple formation.

In statements to the media, Maroto has indicated that he assumes the Mayor's office with “great enthusiasm”, thanking the councilors of the Non-Assigned Group for giving him their support and in the face of an agreement of these characteristics, he has indicated that dialogue and understanding of this type to reach agreements “is being seen in many places”.

Some pacts, he added that serve the interests of the municipalities, the interests of the parties and the interests of the residents, “that on May 28 voted for a change that we have experienced today here in this City Council with this governance agreement and with this position of governing the PP with the councilors of the Non-Assigned Group”.

defend the pact

He has defended, before the agreement, that in addition to the members of Podemos before being expelled, the PP also spoke with the PSOE and that the party represented by the mayors expelled from Podemos had “an electoral program very similar” to that of the PP.

“When you have so many things, it is common, it is much easier to put an agreement into motion, especially when the people are asking you for it because it has been done through social networks and on the street,” he argued..

Regarding how this legislature proposes, he has said that he does it “with enthusiasm, commitment and prepared people”. “I cannot break down any measure but our electoral program contemplates a drop in services, such as the municipal swimming pool and the drop in the allocation of those of us who are councilors”.

Finally, he indicated that “it is historic” that after 28 years of socialist government in La Guardia a woman will govern the City Council and that the government team will be made up of five women and two men.

This government team will seek to improve people's lives —the words of the mayor and former Minister of Health, Carolina Darias—. Although she did not say so, Carolina Darias could well have completed her sentence by going a little further, and, sentencing, confessing that she wants to improve people's lives and, incidentally, also improve it for its president, candidate and general secretary, Pedro Sánchez.. We have to win the future —the mayoress proclaimed— and we have to do it from the present. The map of provincial capitals that this weekend runs through the country shows a decline (notable, difficult to hide) of the red that locates the municipalities where the PSOE will govern.

This is not the case of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where the ex-minister, relying on Nueva Canarias (NC) and the councilor who survived the collapse of Podemos, has managed to save the furniture and celebrate it —with a musical wink dressing the moment— accompanied by the minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, in a Pérez Galdós theater adapted for the cause. The acting president of the Canary Islands Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, also did not miss the appointment. Where else to spend Saturday morning, where better than Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, converted by the PSOE into the square where today it was worth being.

The mayoress has stressed that the government agreement is based on a deep knowledge of the city. In an accurate diagnosis —he said—. He has been away, in Moncloa, for a long time, but the electoral bill has not passed him. His was a matter of honor. The constitution of the city councils materializes a ceremonial that with the general elections around the corner acquires greater relevance, dimensions, announces and gives clues as to what is coming to each other, for better, worse or worse.. In the socialist ranks, they have jumped onto the grass of July 23 feeling like losers, and they are fully aware that when you think, speak, breathe and behave like a loser, the immediate next thing is to lose.. That is why they need oxygen, partial victories, winning places, town halls dyed their own color, airs of comeback, Carolina, Darias.

When a minister ceases to be one because they are entrusted with winning a regional or municipal battle, what is at stake is not only the pull of the candidate, but also the prestige (or discredit) of the Council of Ministers, then , of the government. Nor did the socialists do well in the Canary Islands. Unlike what happened four years ago, when a carambola of square roots evicted the nationalists from the institutions, this time luck has not smiled on the PSOE. In some municipalities they have regressed, perhaps not much, but enough for others to add more and form majorities as nascent as alternatives.

They have won in many places where they will not govern, their traveling companions have failed them —the purple ones, to a large extent—. They have won but lost the government. They have won but lost many municipalities. They won by losing. With exceptions, of course. They won in the cities of the co-capital, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, but they will only govern in the second, where Darias has given Sánchez joy, one of the very few that on May 28 left the candidate as an inheritance to re-election.

The ex-minister has not had it easy. Landing in your city in that condition adds and subtracts, gives and takes away, one thing and the opposite. When you start an electoral campaign fresh out of Moncloa, you go out on the track with a stratospheric knowledge index, unbeatable —what to say if you have been in charge of the Ministry of Health coinciding with the pandemic that hit this generation. Of course, it depends. Knowledge and good valuation are not soul mates. Sometimes they do not go hand in hand, for example if the Executive of which you have been a part is not in good health in the surveys. Nor do you row with the current in favor when far from territorializing the campaign —leaving regional or municipal candidates to recover the lost space— your general secretary mistakenly opts to feed the idea that May was a primary.

The vulnerabilities that she has faced do not end here, who from today will be mayoress of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Few cities are as given to swerve as his, perfectly capable of going from governments of the PP to the PSOE or vice versa, without hardly blinking an eye.. Even so, the ex-minister has managed to show the command baton today in the plenary hall of the corporation that governs the most populous city in the archipelago. she happy. Pedro Sanchez too. The general secretary does not have too many municipalities in the big leagues where he can boast of being a mayor or mayor.

Nor has it been easy for the former minister to close the pact that guarantees her a majority and governability. has cost. He did not manage to tie the agreement with Nueva Canarias and Podemos until last Tuesday. The partners have not made it easy for him. They have come to light announcing themselves as a bulwark of progress in the face of the regressive and right-wing policies that are advancing in other parts of the country —end of the quote—, once the pact was signed, they have presented themselves as the resistance, dam containment of the turn to the right that emerges on July 23 (assuming that the left will not win). Eight areas. Presidency, Treasury and Modernization, Urban Planning and Housing, Social Welfare, Healthy and Sports, Education, Culture, Sports, Territorial Coordination, Carnival, Parties, Water, Security and Emergencies for the ex-minister —already mayoress— and her team. Thus, at first, the temptation is to wonder what he left behind for his partners. Bit. Economic Development, Accessibility and Coastline for Nueva Canarias. Strategic Development and Energy for the purple ones —in the singular, in this case, with a single councilwoman—. Case closed. to govern. It will be with the ministries dyed red or blue, it will be seen.

Today in the Canary Islands, municipal corporations have been established with the Canary Islands Coalition-Popular Party pact in the autonomous government, landing in many (very many) town halls. They will not be indifferent to the result of the general elections. The former minister knows, and the municipal government teams that celebrate their first hours today know that the four years ahead will be conditioned by what happens on July 23. We will have to wait. Bit. Very little. Nothing.

The former president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, has defended this Saturday that Vox calls “intrafamily violence” what the PP calls gender violence.

“They call it domestic violence, we call it gender violence and there will be others who call it something else.. I don't think the nominalist issue is fundamental”, Aguirre stated after being asked about the denial of the number 2 of Vox in the Valencian Community of the existence of sexist and gender violence.

When asked about this question after attending the investiture of José Luis Martínez-Almeida as mayor of Madrid, this time with an absolute majority, Aguirre has placed the “unity of Spain” as “fundamental” and has charged against the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, for his statements about Bildu in which, he stated, “he has done more for the Spaniards and for Spain than all the jingoists with their wristbands have done”. The delegate apologized a few hours later for these words.

Asked about the pacts between PP and Vox, the president of the national PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has defended, marked some “clear guidelines” that were that those who could best know the conditions of each territory were its barons and candidates for the presidency.

In this framework, he has defended that they act “differently” depending on the region. “I would like in these elections, in which I am so happy because the PP is going to have many capitals…. That one of the cities I visit the most is Barcelona, I hope that the populist and anti-system mayor – in reference to Ada Colau – and that there will be another constitutionalist mayor, like Jaume Collboni (PSC candidate), but without Colau”, he concluded

The former ETA Urtza Alkorta has been elected this Saturday as the new mayor of Ondarroa (Vizcaya) with the absolute majority obtained by her formation, EH Bildu, in the last municipal elections. Alkorta was sentenced in 2013 to five years in prison for a crime of collaboration with ETA. The radical coalition obtained seven councilors in the coastal town, compared to the six of the PNV, with which both formations repeated the result obtained in 2019.

Alkorta has collected the makila of mayoress from her predecessor, Zunbeltz Bedialauneta, —also from EH Bildu and mayor during the two previous legislatures— in a plenary session held in the assembly hall of the old Fishermen's Guild of the town. The event, carried out entirely in Basque, was attended by fifty citizens.

The new mayoress helped a command of the terrorist organization “with some mail, information and accompaniment activities”, for which she traveled to France in January 2008 to receive a training course and on her return she carried out shuttle tasks in a car of another who was transporting explosives. Alkorta was arrested for her admission to prison in May 2013 after an important device by the Ertzaintza. Dozens of supporters of the radicals, including Laura Mintegi, Maribi Ugarteburu and Unai Urruzuno, then leaders of the nationalist left, tried to prevent his arrest in Ondarroa.

The two councilors with blood crimes do not take possession

For their part, the two EH Bildu councilors with blood crimes who were elected on 28-M have not taken possession of their minutes. The first, Begoña Uzkudun, integrated the list of the coalition in Rezil (Guipuzcoa). The mayor has not attended the plenary session of constitution of the consistory, which has started at 11.30. Uzkudun served an 18-year prison sentence for the murder of former Azkoitia councilor José Larrañaga Arenas, on December 31, 1984.

This exetarra was the only one of the seven convicted of blood crimes who was elected in the Basque Country in the municipal elections, since the other who obtained a seat as councilor, Juan Carlos Arriaga, was number 3 by EH Bildu for the Navarrese City Council from Berrioplano.

Arriaga has not taken office in Berrioplano either, where the radical coalition has won the mayoralty. The candidates with blood crimes that appeared on the electoral lists of EH Bildu promised not to take office “to contribute to coexistence and peace” after the group of victims of terrorism Covite denounced their inclusion in the candidacies by EH Bildu.

In the case of Arriaga, he was number three on the EH Bildu list in Berrioplano, which, after the municipal elections on May 28, gave him a seat in this consistory. In the constitutive session that took place this Saturday, Arriaga did not take office and was replaced by Mikel Barrena, fourth on the list.

José Luis Sanz is already mayor of Seville after a journey of 600 days. It is the time that has passed since he was appointed candidate of the PP in the Andalusian capital with the blessings of the then leader of the PP, Pablo Casado. The majority of 14 councilors that the popular party obtained on May 28 have been enough for the election of the former councilor of Tomares. PSOE and Con Andalucía have the same number of councilors, with 12 for the socialists and 2 for the leftists, but in the event of a tie, the list with the most votes, headed by Sanz, prevails. The 3 Vox councilors have voted for themselves, but the new mayor will have to look for the formation of Santiago Abascal to be able to carry out their projects or the municipal budgets.

“I am José Luis Sanz, they say that I am serious and I hate neglect and disorganization”, the Seville councilor presented himself, who has given his “success model” as an example in Tomares, the city of the metropolitan area that he has governed for 15 years and that it is the city with the highest income in Andalusia. Among the challenges that the popular leader will face is the problem of cleaning, the elimination of poverty in neighborhoods such as Polígono Sur and the lack of mobility infrastructure, such as the extension of the Seville metro, which currently has only one line of the four screened in the early 2000s. “I will be an uncomfortable mayor whoever governs in Moncloa governs,” Sanz snapped.

With the appointment of Sanz, the PP recovers the Andalusian capital after 8 years in the hands of the PSOE in a historic day for the popular, since they have achieved plenary session in the 8 Andalusian capitals after the agreement in Jaén with Jaén Deserves More. It already happened in 1995 and 2011, the two previous milestones in the municipal expansion of the Andalusian PP, although on this occasion the popular ones accumulate unprecedented institutional power, since they also control 6 of the 8 councils and the Junta de Andalucía. The coup in Seville was especially painful for the PSOE, since it was the big city in the hands of the Socialists and within the party they were convinced of the victory of Antonio Muñoz, who has taken possession of his act as councilor and will be the leader of the opposition, although it is on the lists of the PSOE to the Senate.

The president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, has been in the Colón room of the Seville City Council to support his candidate. It must be remembered that Moreno and Sanz were organic rivals when the succession of Juan Ignacio Zoido as leader of the Andalusian PP was opened. The man from Malaga prevailed with the blessing of Mariano Rajoy and since then he has always been on the opposite side of Sanz. The victories of both have ended up smoothing out any roughness and, in fact, Sanz has used the head of the Andalusian Executive as one of his main assets of the campaign.

“We have worked together with complicity, and we will continue to do so”, said the mayor in his speech, in which he thanked the president of the Board for his involvement. Moreno was in five acts with the already mayor, who has insisted a lot on the advantages that Seville will have for having a president of the Board of the same political color. “The synergies with the Junta are going to be a real boost for this city”, Sanz has settled.

Sanz has already designed his government, which has caused him a slap on the wrist from Vox. The spokesperson for Santiago Abascal's party, Cristina Peláez, has shown herself willing to collaborate with the popular ones to avoid an “unstable government”. The leader of the PSOE, in his speech, defended the eight years of socialist management, which will still be noted in the coming years with projects such as the expansion of the tram, which will be assumed by the popular José Luis Sanz, who has promised not to be a revisionist with the legacy of his predecessor.

Juanma Moreno's route

Before passing through Seville, Juanma Moreno was at the investiture of Bruno García as mayor of Cádiz and in the afternoon he will go to Granada, where Marifrán Carazo assumes the position after being the Minister of Development for the man from Malaga during his first 5 years on the Board. They are two of the cities that the PP has recovered and where the popular will have an absolute majority. Both were deputies in the Andalusian Parliament and are the most palpable example of the need for renewal faced by the popular in the regional Chamber. The same happens in Córdoba, Almería and Málaga, the three cities that were already in popular hands before May 28..

The PP has also recovered, now without an absolute majority, Huelva and Jaén. In the Huelva capital, Pilar Miranda has achieved the investiture alone, but has reached a governance agreement with Vox. Jaén was the last capital to fall to the popular side after several weeks of talks with Jaén Merece Más. The provincial formation will be incorporated into the government of the Jaén capital, which remains in the hands of the popular Agustín González Romo. The general secretary of the Andalusian PP and one of those responsible for the popular success of 28-M, Antonio Repullo, has been in the city to support the new councilor.

Jesús Julio Carnero has taken office this Saturday as mayor of Valladolid, the fourth of the current democratic stage, and with which he puts an end to eight years of the mandate of the socialist Óscar Puente, in a plenary session of constitution of the Corporation that has passed normally and before a large number of guests, including the president and vice president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco and Juan García-Gallardo.

The Valladolid City Council has hosted this Saturday the constitution session of the municipal Corporation, the twelfth of these characteristics that has been held since 1979, as specified by the General Secretary of the Consistory, Jesús Mozo.

After the entrance to the Town Hall of the numerous guests and authorities -Fernández Mañueco has arrived at the City Hall after 12:00 hours- the 27 councilors of the new municipal corporation have agreed and the session has started with an explanation by the secretary and the formation of the table of age, made up of the oldest elected councilor, the socialist Rafaela Romero, 64 years old, and the youngest, the popular Carolina del Bosque, 27. They have then taken office in order of candidacy based on the votes received at the polls on May 28 without major incidents and with the different formats they have sworn or promised the positions..

At that time, the vote for the election as mayor was carried out, to which the heads of the list of each party represented in plenary were presented as candidates: Óscar Puente (PSOE), Jesús Julio Carnero (PP), Irene Carvajal (Vox) and by VTLP Rocío Anguita, who has joined the corporation after the resignation of her predecessors on the list, María Sánchez and Alberto Bustos.

In the vote, as planned after the agreement reached by the Popular Party and Vox this Thursday, the representative of the PP, Jesús Julio Carnero, obtained an absolute majority with 14 votes, while Óscar Puente received eleven from the representatives Socialists, while the two VTLP councilors have voted for Rocío Anguita.

prolonged ovation

The proclamation of the result has been answered with a prolonged ovation from a large part of the attendees, before the new mayor of the city approached the presidential podium in the Plenary Hall to take office, after being sworn in, and receive the baton of command and the corresponding medal, which he received from the outgoing mayor, Óscar Puente, with whom he hugged.

After taking office and sitting in the presidential chair of the plenary session, the newly invested councilor briefly took the floor to thank the outgoing corporation and mayor for the work during the previous term and also launched a plea of the democratic forms with which “the they do things”, whose demonstration is the Plenary, and “make the announcements in due time, never rush”.

It should be noted that the Popular Party and Vox have not communicated before the holding of this session how they are going to distribute government responsibilities among the councilors of their groups. Something that has been criticized this Friday by the outgoing councilor, Óscar Puente.

The pro-independence extreme right has made history in Catalonia. For the first time, two mayoralties have fallen into the hands of openly xenophobic formations. One is La Masò, a small town in Tarragona, where the Front Nacional de Catalunya (FNC) will govern with 4 councilors compared to 3 from Junts per Catalunya (which previously had the 7 councilors of the consistory).. The other town is Ripoll, capital of the Ripollès region, a city with a high level of Islamic immigration that has given rise to a small group that was born when they decided that the FNC was no longer their benchmark for being soft. The only councilor that the FNC took out in 2019, Sílvia Orriols, revolted in her seat and created a new party, Aliança Catalana, a radical platform that on March 28 turned the score around and caused Junts to lose most i had.

The 503 votes of the FNC in 2019 became Aliança Catalana 1,401 votes that represented 6 councilors. Junts, on the other hand, went from 2,263 votes to 760 and from 8 to 3 councilors. ERC dropped from 936 to 734, but kept its three councilors. The PSC lost a councilor and went from 3 to 2, while the CUP kept its two representatives and the Som-hi Ripoll Independents del Ripollès (IDR-IDC) force burst into plenary session with a mayor.

At the time of the vote, Cuban Socialists and Republicans voted for the ERC candidate, Chantal Pérez (she had 7 votes), while the independent councilor abstained and JxCat voted for his candidate, Manoli Vega (3 votes).. Consequence: Orriols was appointed mayor for being the candidate from the most voted list.

With her grandfather's barretina on the table, the representative of Aliança Catalana promised her position “by legal imperative and I swear by the Catalan Constitutions that governed the country on September 11, 1714, legal, in force and non-derogable, which I will fight to restore and guarantee the rights and freedoms of my people”. In this way, the capital of the Ripollès region and one of the most important towns in the Girona Pyrenees, has been taken over by the extreme right, although Orriols is determined to deny that statement.. “I want to call for calm, because Ripoll will not have any far-right government. We will govern judiciously, we will govern responsibly. We will also do it with courage. We will govern for the Ripolleses and not against the Ripolleses. Right now the county Villa de Ripoll is the cradle and is the hope of Catalonia”, he said at his inauguration.

Shots against Islamism

His good words have to be sifted through some of his statements. In his inauguration, he justified having had so many votes because “the neighbors are fed up with the privileges and the favorable treatment towards an association that has allowed a call to kill infidels. They are fed up with seeing how our streets almost have more women with their hair covered than with their hair waving free.. We are tired of working our ass off to make ends meet watching others live, without doing anything, on our taxes.. We are fed up with the night fights, the drug traffic, the incivility that dirty our walls and destroy our furniture.. It is not a fanciful story that I have built from this chair. It is a reality that you have insisted on denying. They have preferred to defame me, disqualify me, laugh at my proposals and knock them down. Their eagerness to ridicule me and belittle me has made them forget that I am not some fortuitous accident, but the legitimate representative of a part of the people”.

Before the official act, several hundred people gathered in front of the City Hall protesting against “racism and intolerance”. At 11 in the morning, Orriols herself published a photo of the square in which there was no one on her account.. “At this time, the demonstration against Sílvia Orriols was supposed to begin. This is the atmosphere that exists at this hour in front of the Ripoll Town Hall”. It also showed a video with the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Urban Guard deployed in front of the doors of the consistory. “Thanks to the local Ripoll police and Mossos for guaranteeing the right to political representation”, he thanked. At the end of the morning, another photo of the tomb of count Guifré el Pilós (Wifredo el Velloso) hung. “Everything began here and, from here, we will reconquer everything”. The extreme independence movement already has a new leader, with epic connotations. Shortly after, the press was already distributing his photograph with other Aliança militants toasting with cava. “Giving me support is a risk of being stigmatized and, therefore, it has double merit,” she thanked her neighbors after being appointed mayor.

The cordon sanitaire failed

The big parties have talked over the last two weeks about the creation of a united front or cordon sanitaire against the Orriols force and talks began. But the president of Junts, Laura Borràs, expressed her doubts, stating that the list with the most votes should be allowed to govern “to respect the will of the people”, some surprising manifestations of the person who held the presidency of the Parliament being the third force with the most votes or of who did not respect the most voted list in the last regional elections and did not allow the socialist Salvador Illa to be president. Faced with the disavowal of senior officials from his own party, he went off on a tangent advising that it be the local leadership that decided “democratically” what to do.

And the local address of Junts did it. In fact, this strategy of lack of definition resulted in the fact that, when the ERC, PSC and CUP already had an agreement practically signed, they found Junts refusing to be part of it. The pick up came late Friday afternoon, appealing to the fact that Junts had been underestimated. The truth is that Borràs's party wanted the mayoralty for its candidate, Manoli Vega, while playing her cards to make an anti-Orriols operation fail that left her tied hand and foot in front of the rest of the opposition. On Friday, at the last minute, the situation was clarified with the unchecking of JxCat and the way for Orriols to be elected mayor as head of the most voted list was paved, since in the absence of Junts the other councilors were insufficient to raise an absolute majority. It was such a tactical situation that Vega herself, in the act of inauguration of Orriols, already proposed herself “as the second most voted list, to lead a motion of censure starting Monday”. clearer, the water.

Ripoll's future is unknown. Aliança Catalana is a force that announces that it will “declare and defend independence”. In its principles it already says that “Aliança Catalana was born to unilaterally declare independence and defend it until the Spanish State was definitively expelled from Catalonia. Catalonia is a nation. We recognize ourselves as a nation and we have repeatedly endorsed ourselves to demand that our government become an independent state within the international concert.”. In addition to proposing Catalan as the only official language, its program includes promoting “immigration policies that benefit the citizens of Catalonia, not foreigners. In this sense, it will promote a restrictive immigration policy, until the level of unemployment drops and wages increase to European levels”.

A preview of the heavy hand

It also promises to “redirect aid and public services to the citizens of Catalonia, not to foreign citizens (…) 80% of immigrants in Catalonia are from outside the EU and have an average income 40% lower than Catalans. This immigration represents a social burden and makes the public protection network inaccessible to the majority of Catalans who see how their government leaves them helpless when they need it most”. It also promises to deport “violent immigrants and repatriate illegal immigrants.”. Crime and the waste of public resources will be put an end to with the phenomenon of Mena (Unaccompanied Foreign Minors), where the Generalitat has wasted more than 150 million euros and has not been able to prevent 18% from committing crimes. Almost half of the inmates in Catalonia are of foreign origin, when they represent less than 20% of the population”.

On June 7, before an announcement from the City Council announcing a women's dinner in various languages and in whose drawings one of them was seen wearing a veil (out of a total of 7), Aliança Catalana made an announcement of its own: “The Ripoll City Council governed by Aliança Catalana will not normalize the Islamic veil, a symbol of the submission of women, with money from the people of Ripoll. Nor will it help demographic substitution or promote the loss of identity of the Catalan Nation (sic).. Enough of pro-Islamist propaganda!”. It is an announcement to sailors, but also a foretaste of the strong hand that Orriols wants for its people.

In La Masò, a town near Tarragona, the expectation was minimal, among other things because it does not have the economic, social and political weight of Ripoll. It is just a town with a census of 235 inhabitants of which 177 voted. But that was enough so that the seven councilors that Junts per Catalunya previously had are now, for the most part, in the sack of the FNC: this small party obtained 91 votes compared to Junts' 67, which was left with 3 councilors. The Front, however, has a total of six councilors, since it also obtained two representatives in Manresa, where it obtained 1,618 votes. It was also presented in Barcelona (930 votes) and in Girona (158 votes), but it did not get representation in the two capitals..

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.

A municipality of Teruel with just over 300 inhabitants. It is the destination that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has chosen on a key date: this Saturday the town halls of all Spain are constituted, and the popular leader has chosen to visit Celadas, a small town in Teruel with which to wink at Empty Spain and its main representative in Aragon: Tomás Guitarte, head of Teruel Exists. The decision is not accidental. This Friday, the candidate for the presidency of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, held a meeting with Guitarte to bring positions closer to a possible investiture of the popular leader. The regionalist leader is not closed to an abstention, which would make it easier for the PP to minimize the influence of Vox and not replicate the example of the Valencian Community in more territories.

“I want to be president of rural Spain,” Feijóo claimed this Saturday, after attending the inauguration of the popular Raquel Clemente at the Celadas City Hall. The popular leader insisted that the Empty Spain agenda will be a priority in his Government program, and has promised a series of tax incentives and policies aimed at solving the problem of abandonment of the rural world. The popular leader has defended the “importance” of “proximity” politics, a maneuver with which Feijóo also intends to attract votes to the PP from a political current that does not have a defined ideology.

In Aragon, the PP won the elections in Aragon with 28 seats, six away from the absolute majority. Vox got seven, so the sum would be obvious if there were no other forces on the board.. Teruel Existe has three, insufficient to invest Azcón, but they could serve to prevent those from Abascal from entering the executive. The popular candidate can force an unsuccessful first investiture vote —where he needs an absolute majority— and try it in the second round with a simple majority. The 28 'yes' of the PP tie with the 28 'no' of the left (PSOE, CHA, UP, IU). If Teruel Existe goes to abstention, the PP would only need an affirmative vote to break the tie and govern.

Feijóo has defined his visit to the small municipality of Teruel as the beginning of a national agenda focused on the field of Empty Spain, which he promises not to leave aside if he manages to reach Moncloa. The popular leader needs to start tying support for a possible investiture in the Congress of Deputies. Despite the precedent of the Valencian Community, and despite the fact that the closest approach to Vox del PP has taken place under the presidency of Alberto Núñez Feijóo —those of Abascal will access the government of some 140 municipalities this Saturday, including large provinces—, the leader popular promises to govern alone.

The intention of the popular leader implies beginning to build bridges with the rest of the forces of the parliamentary arch to tie up a sufficient majority to stop the entry of the ultra-right in a hypothetical Executive of the PP. Every vote counts, and those of Empty Spain could be important in Congress after 23-J. Feijóo has also maintained timid contacts with the PNV, PRC or UPN, a force that will guarantee the investiture of the popular leader despite the break between the two forces in Navarra.

Plato wrote that man is the wisest of animals because he knows how to count. For the same, he expressly warned us that we should not confuse arithmetic with the calculation of merchants. And what else is politics, if not a market to which a party goes to buy or sell its electoral harvest by weight based on its own or others' appetite for power?

Allow me this digression in the constitutive day of the town halls after the polls in May. And, above all, with a view to the upcoming national political scene after the July 23 elections, depending on the parliamentary arithmetic that comes out of the polls. Refrain from morality dispensers who are scandalized because, to complete their own equations of power, the majorities make room for the minorities camped on the same side of the barricade. The extreme right, in the case of the PP. Enemies of the Constitution, in the case of the PSOE.

Those are the numbers, stupid, that the famous story would say for political scientists, clever, commentators and fine analysts. Like the waves on the Havana boardwalk, there break the admonitions of those who denounce that Feijóo assumes the ideological framework of Vox and of those who accuse Sánchez of sympathizing with the haters of the 1978 regime. But if it is in the light of democratic legality, not in light of our particular ideological positions or political preferences, I do not understand why one should be in a better condition than the other in a bloc politics like the one that conditions the fight for the power here and now.

This appeal to plot symmetry is the raincoat of the PP after its Valencian incarnation with Vox and before the municipal pacts announced for today's votes in numerous town halls. From Elche to Durango, passing through Valladolid, Burgos, Guadalajara, Ciudad Real, Toledo… These are the marked cards that the PP uncovers so that no one is deceived if the numbers of July 23 demand to clear the path of the ultra-right to power institutional. With the hope that the legal frameworks will normalize, as the presence of the enemies of the Kingdom of Spain in the central government has already normalized.. Because from Ferlosio to here the “red rooster” has faded and the “black rooster” is only dark gray.

Of course, let's recognize that Feijóo has carried out the “vaccine” operation (Vox in the system's bloodstream) under the effects of the disinhibition generated by an own goal from the PSOE. I am referring to the declarations of the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, about Bildu's contributions to the national cause (“He has done more for Spain and the Spaniards than the jingoists with their wristbands”).

So today the news is in Durango, where half of the political class of the Basque Country resides.. In the constitutive vote of the City Council, governed for the last four years by Bildu, there will only be six media outlets, of the 38 that have requested accreditation. The only councilor of the PP, Carlos García, is the decisive vote. Between the mayor of the PNV supported by the PSE or the mayor of Bildu with the support of his rope, the PP councilor (a hero has been born in Feijóo's narrative) will surely tip the balance towards the former.

For nothing? Well, in exchange for winning the game of hateful comparisons and giving yourself an additional shot of motivation inside and outside the Basque Country. If not, you will tell me what the presence in Durango of the alter ego of Díaz Ayuso, his chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who at this time will be fighting in the mayor's office for a space in the plenary hall, is all about. Just for the pleasure of recognizing yourself in the headline that will be generated at mid-morning today: “The PP expels Bildu from one of the most populated cities in Vizcaya.”