Cristina Ibarrola (Pamplona, 1969) is already the mayoress of Pamplona and her investiture has cracked the entente that the PSOE has maintained since 2019 with EH Bildu in Navarra. Ibarrola has been elected mayor of the Navarrese capital in the second vote, since no other candidate has achieved an absolute majority. EH Bildu has presented the candidacy of Joseba Asiron and the Socialist Party of Navarra has voted blank. The Socialists have maintained their commitment and have not provided their five votes to Asiron, who has had the support of Geroa Bai (two) and Contigo Navarra (one).
Cristina Ibarrola, with the nine votes from UPN and the two from the PP, has added 11 supports, while Asiron has also achieved the same number of supports by having the votes of EH Bildu (eight) plus those of Geroa Bai (two). and with you Navarra (one). Being the candidate with the most votes last 28-M, Ibarrola has been invested as mayor in a plenary chaired by Koldo Martínez (Geroa Bai), the councilor with whom it was speculated that it could be the third way between Ibarrola and Asiron. The result of the vote has provoked cries of joy from the regionalist supporters concentrated in the Town Hall square. A group of nationalist supporters responded with shouts of “UPN, kanpora” (UPN, out, in Basque).
The celebration of the investiture plenary session in Pamplona has developed in absolute normality inside the iconic City Hall while two concentrations were held in the surroundings called by followers of UPN and EH Bildu. Barely a hundred supporters of the regionalist formation have met in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento while another group was concentrated in the Plaza de San Francisco. Members of the National Police, the Provincial Police and the Urban Guard have been deployed around the Town Hall and in the Plaza del Castillo while the investiture plenary session was taking place.
Socialist distancing from Bildu
The Valle de Egües City Council has also confirmed the tense relationship between PSOE and EH Bildu after the 28-M elections. In Egües, the third municipality in Navarra with more than 20,000 inhabitants, the Socialists have not supported the candidate of the Otegi coalition, making it easier for Xurine Peñas of UPN to be appointed mayor. The PSOE of Navarra needs at least the abstention of the Otegi coalition to ensure that María Chivite is again elected president of the foral community. Bildu will have to position himself in his agreement with the PSOE in Navarra after a legislature in which he facilitated the investiture of the socialist president and guaranteed her stability by approving all her budgets.
The Valle de Egües plenary session has become the foretaste of what has happened later in Pamplona, the Navarrese capital in which UPN aspires to continue governing but which EH Bildu claims if it obtains the support of the Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN), Geroa Bai and Contigo Navarra.
In Egües, Peñas has added her six votes and that of the PP councilor while the Bildu candidate has also added another seven supports with the PSN (2 councilors) voting for her own candidate. A tie that has placed Peñas, a 41-year-old nurse who has been affiliated with UPN for barely a year, as mayor, having been the candidate with the most votes at the polls.