I’m not smoking again, they won’t get me to smoke again.” The president of Castile-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, keeps his calm, and his critical positions with the PSOE’s official line on the Amnesty law and the agreements with Catalan independence, despite seeing himself in the eye of the hurricane to his own party, in whose youth he began to join the military at 16 years old. And now he is 55.
It is not the first time that, in moments of tension with the leadership of the PSOE, he warns that he does not smoke again. Emiliano García-Page (Toledo, 1968) quit smoking shortly before starting his first election campaign as a candidate for mayor of his hometown, a position he won in 2007 after signing a government pact with United Left
García-Page’s pulse does not tremble and they say that he knows how to deal with the criticism of his party colleagues, despite the clash experienced this week with the leadership of the PSOE, after the “virulent reaction” that his statements provoked in the Madrid Tourism Fair, they also caused surprise and strangeness, according to their team.
Above all, he was upset that the PSOE itself made “interested interpretations, to hurt him”, of his meeting in Fitur with other regional presidents of the PP – such as the Andalusian Juanma Moreno Bonilla, the Valencian Carlos Mazón or the from Murcia Fernando López Miras–, with whom he coincided in a “fortuitous” way after forming in the line of greeting to King Felipe VI during his visit to the fair.
The day before, a report by the Fundació d’Estudis d’Economia Aplicada (Fedea) highlighted the underfunding suffered by Castilla-La Mancha, the Valencian Community, the Region of Murcia and Andalusia. This body proposed a regional leveling fund of 3,000 million euros for these four communities.
And the four regional presidents affected by this underfunding agreed on Fedea’s analysis, in the talk they held on this issue in Fitur. But when Mazón proposed a public meeting of the four to defend this proposal, García-Page flatly refused. “They are practically ready to extradite me”, alleged the Castillo-Mancheque. With his criticism of the amnesty and the prominence given to Carles Puigdemont to sustain the legislature, he thought that all he needed was to open a common front with PP presidents for regional funding.
“It wasn’t a conspiracy, it wasn’t the Munich conspiracy, it should be seen in a normal and natural way that several regional presidents, no matter which party they belong to, talk about a common problem”, they allege the García-Page team. “I don’t want the money to hold illegal referendums, I want it to build nursery schools, health centers, homes for the elderly and hospitals. It’s the big difference”, he argues himself.
And about his criticisms of the Amnesty law and the latest amendments agreed between the PSOE, Junts and ERC to avoid the alleged crime of terrorism that the judge imputes, they say that they were no more forceful than those he already expressed in the passed on pardons, the repeal of sedition or the reform of embezzlement. What was different this time, as García-Page could immediately appreciate, was the forceful reaction of the PSOE leadership, which fit “with a bit of surprise”. The Spanish-Mancheque president himself assumed that the moment the Spanish Government and the PSOE leadership are going through is “delicate”, and that is why the storm was unleashed. García-Page, in any case, defends his right to speak, have an opinion and take sides. And he believes that everyone else in the PSOE has the right to do the same. Always, they warn their team, “with respect and without entering into personal disqualification”.
The problem is that it has been raining for years, and the PSOE leadership declares itself “fed up” with García-Page’s constant criticism of the party’s official line, and warns that it only gives ammunition to the right. Some accuse him of “disloyalty” in the acronym and ask him to direct his missiles towards the PP, not against the PSOE.
But the Spanish-Mancheque president replies that he is already fighting the right, and with notable success, moreover, at the polls. “I won the elections”, he replies. After a long political career in the governments of José Bono and José María Barreda, García-Page was mayor of Toledo between 2007 and 2015. That year he already won the presidency of Castile-La Mancha. And now he faces his third consecutive mandate, with the only absolute majority that the PSOE still enjoys in the entire regional map. “Let’s see if I have to apologize to win the elections”, he replies to the criticism of his colleagues.
Some even claim that García-Page harbored hopes of being crowned general secretary of the PSOE if Sánchez had lost the presidency of the Spanish government, as planned, after the general elections in July. Others consider that, if these were his intentions, he would not have succeeded. Not even José Bono, who was his political godfather, succeeded, as they remember.
And García-Page himself, in this sense, responds to the warning of the first vice-president and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, not to seek notoriety in the confrontation. “At my age, I won’t grow up or grow any more, neither politically nor physically”, he says ironically. Although he also warns: “I have a clearly minority position in the PSOE, but what is a minority today… maybe tomorrow it won’t be”.
