Some confirmations are still missing, but everything points to the fact that the left can retain the Valencia Provincial Council. This is not minor news for Valencian socialism, which despite its increase in votes on March 28 compared to 2019, has lost most of the institutions in which it governed, alone or in collaboration with CompromÃs and Unides Podem, since the Generalitat, the Castellón council, the three capitals and important town halls. But, despite everything, the institutional loss for the socialists in 1995 was much worse; they were left with nothing.
Maintaining the Valencia Provincial Council means, in addition to being a relief, having a powerful platform suitable for working with two objectives. The first is to have a powerful speaker to oppose the enormous institutional power of the PP and Vox. Carlos Mazón knows this well, who as president of the Alicante Provincial Council knew how to program a forceful response to the Botà nic’s policies and lead the discontents of his province on issues such as State investments or cutting the Tajo-Segura transfer. If Carlos Mazón is going to be president of the Generalitat Valenciana it is, in part, because of the role that he has been able to develop as president of the Provincial Council of his province.
The councils are also, for what has been said, a fabulous structure for shaping new leadership. This matter is essential. In the PSPV it is assumed that sooner rather than later it will be necessary to start a transition process that will prepare the party for new electoral battles: a process that will begin, at the earliest, after the general elections called for the next 23-J. Surely Ximo Puig will want an orderly transition, far from what happened after the 1995 defeat that opened the party upside down, fracturing it in many families.
From the Diputación de València these new leaders can emerge, from Carlos Bielsa, mayor of Mislata, as a possible future president of this institution to the young mayors of Cullera, Paterna, Sagunt or GandÃa, cities that will continue to be presided over by a socialist. Without ruling out that in this process others such as the former president of this institution, Toni Gaspar, acquire a leading role in the group of the Valencian Parliament as a prior phase to play a more prominent role in the PSPV. A separate case is that of Jorge RodrÃguez. The former president of this institution resigned due to the AlquerÃa case, a matter from which he was acquitted yesterday, like his entire team, after a long judicial ordeal. He was removed from the PSPV and has won again in his city, Ontinyent, with his own party. His vote is key for the left to maintain the Provincial Council. Could the PSPV recover it?
The institution is going to acquire a key role for the PSPV in this journey through the desert, with the possibility that new actors come to the fore to help Ximo Puig design the Valencian socialism of the future. attentive
