The catalog of anecdotes and incidents in this campaign for the municipal elections this Sunday, May 28, in Andalusia has been extensive.. From the two brothers facing off for the Mayor's Office of Alcalá de los Gazules (Cádiz), in Vox and PP candidacies, to the thugs in Marinaleda (Seville), through the outrage in the Granada town of Pulianas, where the husband of a former PP candidate ran over and assaulted the partner of the PSOE candidate.
There are also mayors who have devised new ways of campaigning, such as Juan Franco, leader of La Línea 100 x 100 and current councilor of the municipality on the border with Gibraltar with 21 out of 25 councilors in the corporation. Four years ago, for the electoral campaign in which he ended up sweeping, he opted for a life-size cut-out so that citizens could take a selfie with Franco. In this campaign, he went a step further and took his message to the metaverse.
The mayor of La Línea created his avatar to transfer the formula a coffee with Juan Franco to the virtual space of the metaverse, in which, through four sessions, the people of La Línea who want to know about the program were able to enter a digital room and talk with the candidate for re-election.
chercos
The campaign of José Antonio Torres (PP), mayor of the Almeria town of Chercos since 1995, may have been more traditional. The councilor and candidate for re-election is 98 years old and at his age he did not hesitate to run again this 28M.
Another candidate for mayor is Juanma Moreno Pacheco, considered one of the 80 best bakers in Spain, who now aspires to become Mayor of Benadalid (Málaga) for the PP. With the same name and first surname as the president of the Junta de Andalucía, the popular Juanma Moreno Bonilla, the candidate in these municipal elections repeats as the head of the list and intends to take a historic turn, like his namesake, and reach the Mayor's Office of Benadalid , which has never been governed by the Popular Party.
The baker Juanma Moreno Pacheco in his workshop intends to give a historical turn, as Juanma Moreno already did in Andalusia. EFE
Also in the province of Malaga, Huiquin Dong Lin, whom everyone knows as Maggie, is a left-wing candidate for Mayor of Guaro, a municipality where she settled three years ago after having toured her native country, China, part of Asia and Europe and almost all of Spain.
“I love traveling, getting to know other cultures, that's how I learned Spanish,” explains Maggie, who comes from a small city near Taiwan, Fuzhou, where she lived until she finished her studies, at which time she also decided to quit her job. and off to “explore the world.”
The long campaign has also caused candidates to change parties. Manuel Torres, number seven on the Vox list in the municipal elections of Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz), resigned from the list, left his party, and asked to vote for the current mayor, José María Román, of the PSOE , “because it is the best option”.
More worrisome was what happened in Pulianas, where the husband of a former PP candidate, who did not make the final list of that party after being investigated for a crime related to marijuana, was arrested last Wednesday accused of running over intentionally attacking the partner of the PSOE candidate in this same town Gemma Vaquero, who is in serious condition.
In Higuera de la Sierra, a town in the Sierra de Huelva with about 1,300 inhabitants, two people were injured by being hit with a stick while attending a Popular Party rally.
As confirmed to Efe by the candidate for mayor for the PP, Mario Domínguez, some unknown persons threw a large stick from the street into the school yard, crossing eight meters through the air and hitting two of the people who attended the rally. , one of whom fainted from the impact of the blow.
marinaleda
Also in Marinaleda, where the day laborer leader Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo has been mayor since 1979, when the first democratic municipal elections were held, there were serious clashes on the first day of the electoral campaign as a result of the act programmed by Vox with the presence of the MEP Jorge Buxadé.
Insults, attacks and even a minor injury with a gap in one eyebrow was the result of the presentation of the party led by Santiago Abascal in a town where the left dominates.
Representatives of the cultural field have also been involved this 28M. In Granada, the Hispanicist Ian Gibson closes the list of the confluence of Podemos, Alianza Verde and Independientes in Granada, as he did in 2019. In Seville, Curro Morales, one of the founders of the band Califato 3/4, is last on the list for Adelante Andalucía in Seville.