The PP puts an end to 44 years of "cortijo" of the PSOE in Puertollano

Puertollano has put an end this Saturday to 44 years of chained mandates of the PSOE in an industrial town in Ciudad Real where more than 47,000 inhabitants reside. The popular Miguel Ángel Ruiz has been invested mayor only with the votes of the 10 councilors of his group after the two from Vox have voted for themselves for their intention to govern alone.

“We have been able to create an illusion for change and that the fear of always voting the same is lost,” says the winner of the last municipal elections, who considers that his predecessors in office have managed the city as if it were their ” farmhouse” and have applied policies “marked by ideology”. “They have forgotten to listen to the people,” says the new mayor.

Before the investiture, the PP candidate for mayor held two previous meetings with Vox, which asked him in exchange for the support of his two representatives to enter the Government with the position of deputy mayor and a councilorship. The agreement did not come to fruition, because according to Ruiz it was “unfeasible”, but even so, the mayors of Santiago Abascal's party have paved the way for his election.

“If they are going to put an armchair before working for the city, there is a problem here,” says the newly elected councilor, who nevertheless trusts that the representatives of Vox “will lower their expectations”. “We are open to negotiating with everyone,” he adds, also referring to the eight councilors of the PSOE and the IU who will also form the local corporation.

During the campaign of the municipal and regional elections on May 28, Puertollano was the only municipality in Castilla-La Mancha in which the regional president, Emiliano García-Page, and Pedro Sánchez met at a rally. The Minister of Territorial Policy and Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, who was mayor of the municipality between 2019 and 2021, also participated in it.

His successor, Adolfo Muñiz, faced his first test at the polls with the support of the acronym that had been controlled by the town's mayor's office since the beginning of democracy. From now on, he will sit on the opposition bench, in principle with the intention of remaining there for the next four years, although this newspaper has tried -unsuccessfully- to contrast this extreme as well as to know to what he attributes the defeat of his party in a purely socialist fiefdom.

At his inauguration, the new mayor of Puertollano has been supported by the leader of the Castilian-Lamancha PP, Francisco Núñez. For the formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, this is one of the symbols of the political “change of cycle” that predicts that it will reach La Moncloa in the July 23 elections.

Although the community continues to be governed by the only PSOE baron who achieved an absolute majority on 28-M, in addition to this municipality, the mayoralties of the region's provincial capitals -Toledo, Albacete, Guadalajara and Ciudad Real- have changed their political sign with the only exception of Cuenca. In all of them from now on there will be popular councilors with the support of Vox.