The merger between Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena, in the province of Badajoz, is further away than ever and on the brink of being blown up. With the name of Vegas Altas, the union was scheduled for the first quarter of 2027, a date approved in the last legislature when the Socialists ruled in both towns with an absolute majority. But the results in Don Benito (where the referendum was full of controversy and a yes vote was won by 0.27%) in the last municipal elections seem to definitively move away from this process if, as it seems, the City Council changes hands.
The PSOE of José Luis Quintana -a very close friend of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez- lost the absolute majority on 28-M and five councilors when the denialist party broke out with the Siempre Don Benito merger, which has become the second political force with seven councilors, which has dynamited the process. The final decision has been in the hands of the PP, which obtained five councillors.
The meetings of the last days for the configuration of the City Council have led to a rapprochement between the popular and Siempre Don Benito, who are already very close to reaching a definitive agreement. In fact, this very afternoon, the PP has offered an agreement for the formation of a government “that contemplates the holding of a new referendum on the merger between Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena and the alternation in the mayoralty of the city for two years. “This proposal has been transferred to the Siempre Don Benito formation, from which the PP expects an affirmative response,” this party said in a statement.
Alternation in the Mayor's Office
The PP understands that the majority of Dombenitenses “want a change of government” after the electoral results. By virtue of the above, they say, “any change in the City Council goes through the Popular Party and, therefore, we demand the formation of a joint government with the 2+2 formula, and with a PP mayor for the last two years of the legislature”.
In addition, the statement continues, “and taking into account that the forms in the merger process between Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena have generated concern and discomfort, the PP offers to restart the work” to achieve “a new public consultation, facilitating the timely information to citizens so that they can decide freely”.
In this sense, the PP of Don Benito has stressed “that the name of the future city is an essential element to guarantee said freedom of choice”. And it is that with the choice of the name, after ruling out by popular outcry a first process in which those who first proposed the “Mestas del Guadiana” or Concordia del Guadiana”, also emerged that of Vegas Altas, which has also originated rejection, because it also responds to a term that already has a close district.
Given that the agreement between PP and Siempre Don Benito was already very close, this morning, less than 48 hours after the formation of the Municipal Corporation, the current acting mayor, José Luis Quintana, offered the PP to alternate two years in the Mayor's Office during the next legislature, an “unpublished” proposal for the Socialists, which is justified by the “singularity” of the situation in the town, in order to give continuity to the process initiated for the merger with Villanueva de la Serena.
Quintana explained that the proposal transferred to the PP contemplates that the PSOE govern the first two years, while the vice mayor's office corresponds to the popular ones, and the last two years of the legislature be the other way around.. It also offers a distribution of the municipal delegations agreed between both groups, while the composition of the Governing Board would be proportional, so that the PSOE would have four representatives and the PP three.
With this proposal, PP and PSOE would have 14 of the 21 councilors in the Don Benito City Council. They would thus have a sufficient majority to culminate the merger process in the next legislature, since for Quintana it is essential to finish it in the next four years: “either it is done in this legislature, or it will never be done,” the still acting mayor has asserted. .
Quintana has argued that no one will “assume the cost” that the process has had for the Socialists, and neither can they “defraud the 66 percent” of the population that supported the merger in the referendum, nor future generations.
“Revise and reformulate”
Taking into account that without both formations the process could not continue, the Socialists propose that “all those issues that have been the cause of discrepancy will be reviewed and reformulated to make possible a total unity of action in the process”, according to Europa Press reports.
In such a way that it proposes during this legislature to restart the work of the commissions, “returning its activity to February 21, 2022 and including the participation of, at least, the PP and the PSOE of Don Benito.”
In the same way, the draft of the merger agreement will be drawn up with the participation and agreement of both parties, which commit to concluding the merger process throughout this legislature.
It even states that the name of the municipality resulting from the merger will be submitted to the corresponding analyzes so that there is a “single and agreed proposal between the PSOE and PP of Don Benito.”