Jaén lights up the new 'Teruel exists': "We are like the PNV, we want what is owed to us"

For a cancer patient from Jaén to be able to do a PET TAC (a diagnostic imaging test), they have to travel the hundred kilometers that separate the capital of this province from that of Granada or Córdoba. In recent decades, in this corner of deep (and emptied) Andalusia, 90% of conventional rail services have been dismantled and the AVE avoids it on its route from Granada to Madrid. As if that were not enough, it is the only province in the entire community that has not seen up close the economic “miracle” that Juanma Moreno's PP executive sells: its population continues to decline and its economy loses steam.

The list of grievances against this province is almost endless, but it is the pillar on which Jaén Merece Más was born, and grew, a party created in the image and likeness of Teruel Exists and which, after the May 28 elections, He has become a new actor to take into account on the Andalusian political board after achieving three councilors in the Jaen capital who have given him the key to the city council and the power to wrest from the PP a government agreement that goes far beyond the consistory and that includes investment promises that are the responsibility of both the Junta de Andalucía -today in the hands of the PP- and the central government, in the event that Alberto Núñez Feijóo wins on 23J.

In last year's regional elections, 2,800 votes separated this new formation from opening a gap in the regional Parliament, but the municipal ones have compensated them. They have managed to be the key in four Jaén town halls and they are already announcing that they will contest the general elections on July 23 with the same objective that has led them here: that the province of Jaén occupy “its rightful place” ending “decades of abandonment and none”.

Juan Manuel Camacho, president of Jaén Deserves More, is forceful and clear. The goal is “to enter the institutions and decide on the budgets”. It is the only way, he argues, to achieve the “socioeconomic convergence” of the province, weighed down, he complains, by the policies of the two big parties, the PP and the PSOE, to whom he blames, equally, for the delay that it presents Jaén in practically all economic and social parameters. “Put the batteries in” is the mantra they repeat in the new formation at the provincial level.

The leader of Jaén Deserves More does not hide that they have agreed with the one who has offered them the most, although he rejects that one can speak of an “auction”, as the PSOE has done. “It is not an auction, we want Jaén to be given what is due to it,” he emphasizes, citing the number of toilets as an example, the lowest in all of Andalusia. “We do not ask for luxuries, we ask for the same rights,” he insists.

Erik Domínguez, Agustín González and Antonio Repullo, for the PP, and Juan Manuel Camacho and Manuel Carlos Vallejo, for Jaén Merece Más after signing the agreement. JMM

“It couldn't go on like this”; confirms Manuel Carlos Vallejo, the university professor signed by Jaén Deserves More as a candidate for Mayor last May. He has become the first deputy mayor and, also, the main person in charge of checking that what was agreed with the PP is fulfilled because if there are breaches or delays “our hands will not tremble.”

Jaén Deserves More ran for the first time in elections in June last year, in which Juanma Moreno achieved an absolute majority. But he wasn't born then. Its origin is the platform of the same name that emerged in 2017 as a response from civil society to the deafness of the traditional parties in terms of their investment and infrastructure claims.

It promoted large demonstrations and mobilizations, but the year 2021 marked a turning point. It was that year when the central government of Pedro Sánchez granted Córdoba the headquarters of the defense logistics base, to which Jaén also aspired.. “It was a great finger,” says Camacho, who points directly to the former vice president Carmen Calvo, from Cordoba, as the person responsible for that last affront. And from platform to party.

Facing 23J, Jaén Merece Más is not only going to present a candidacy, but it does so with the forecast of obtaining a seat in the Congress of Deputies from which, faithful to its philosophy, its sole objective will be to sweep home, for Jaen. “We are like the PNV, we want what is owed to us,” says the leader of Jaén Deserves More.