Macarena Olona assured, when she was still flirting with returning to politics, that her return to the ring would be for Granada or it would not be. The woman from Alicante called herself Macarena de Granada in that failed assault on the vice presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, which ended with the state lawyer outside Vox, after a very loud divorce. Even Macarena de Salobreña, which is where she registered in a somewhat peculiar way to be able to run in the Andalusian elections of 2022. And he has fulfilled his promise by heading the Granada list of his Caminando Juntos project, the party with which he presents himself to the generals in a competition that, in this Andalusian province, is full of cuneros.
Among the main parties, only the PP presents a man from Granada, the veteran Carlos Rojas. He left regional politics in 2015 to go to Congress and will continue there in this legislature, for which he has seen three leaders of his party pass: Mariano Rajoy, Pablo Casado and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The Galician has awarded him for his role in this long year of transition since the former president of the Xunta arrived in Genoa and, in fact, he is the only head of the popular list that remains in Andalusia compared to 2019.
Rojas is not the only one who repeats, since Olona was a candidate for Granada four years ago, but under the initials of Vox. From the Andalusian province, she established herself as one of the main faces of the party, led the appeals to the Constitutional against states of alarm and was general secretary of the parliamentary group and scourge of ministers such as Fernando Grande-Marlaska. It was her visibility that led to her trip to Andalusia and she did so accompanied by the person who now replaces her on the list of the ultra-conservative party, Jacobo González-Robatto, alias Coco Robatto.
With experience in the world of finance, he was responsible for Olona's campaign in his failed Andalusian assault. He accompanied her everywhere along with his press officer, Álvaro Zancajo. And he has no connection with Granada, although he does with Andalusia, since he was married to a Sevillian influencer, mother of his two children, and for this reason he has lived on horseback between Madrid, where he was born, and the Andalusian capital.. There he also served as an advisor to the Vox parliamentary group in the regional Parliament and, later, he was elected senator by regional designation.
But Robatto and Olona are not the only ones who can maintain old quarrels in this battle of the cuneros into which the big parties have turned Granada. In the provincial debates that are common in the campaigns of the generals, the left will have the opportunity to confront the two models of feminism that separate the PSOE and Unidas Podemos. The former vice president of the Government and the first strong woman of Pedro Sánchez, Carmen Calvo, heads the list of her party despite being from Cordoba. And for Sumar, Martina Velarde, leader of Podemos Andalucía, one of the leaders closest to the leadership of Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, is presented. Born in Rota (Cádiz), she also works as a Cordovan, although on her social networks she has defended her relationship with Granada, where she lived for 11 years after studying at the university in the Nasrid capital..
Calvo is one of the main representatives of that classic feminism of the PSOE, now swayed by the support of Amelia Valcárcel for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. His statements in the Ágora de Hoy por Hoy, where he collides with Pablo Iglesias and José Manuel García Margallo, incite feminism aligned within United We Can, linked to queer theory. The main battlefield in this matter has been the processing of the trans law, so a clash between the two women would not be unusual.. And it would be necessary to see in what position Macarena Olona is placed in this new version that criticizes postulates of her old party, such as the denial of sexist violence.
I want to greet you good people and tell you that as General Secretary of Podemos Andalucía I assume with responsibility leading the list of Granada for Sumar, as my party has asked me to.
— Martina Velarde (@MartinaVelardeG) June 20, 2023
The situations of Calvo and Velarde also have other organic similarities, since they are an example of a common practice in their parties and that does not always generate joy in the militancy. Velarde is now a deputy for Córdoba, but she is presenting herself in Granada because it is the quota that Yolanda Díaz's team has agreed to for Podemos with the rest of the Sumar actors. It must be remembered that, in Andalusia, the majority force in the space is IU, which has 3 of the 6 starting positions if the results are similar to those achieved by the left to the left of the PSOE in 2019.
The case of Carmen Calvo is more striking. It is not the only cunera on the PSOE lists, since Fernando Grande-Marlaska will go to Cádiz, a province with which he has a very weak connection – he spends a few days at a sister's house in the Cadiz town of Rota -. But it is curious that a woman from Cordoba goes to Granada. He does it because in his province the two probable positions are for the minister Luis Planas and the general secretary of the party in the territory, Rafi Crespín. The PSOE lists are racked, so Calvo would have been relegated to fourth place, impossible for the Socialists to achieve. And that is what has caused his trip to a neighboring province where there have been voices against his position on the list.