The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel DÃaz Ayuso, will close the list with which the PP will present itself on May 28 in the municipal elections in Bilbao, while Miguel Ãngel RodrÃguez, its director of Cabinet, will close the popular list in Durango.
The PP of Madrid has reported that it is a symbolic gesture with which the PP candidate for re-election to the regional government wants to support the party in the Basque Country. Curiously, it has been 20 years since José MarÃa Aznar decided to close the list of the PP in Bilbao in the municipal elections of 2003.
The differences regarding the political situation in the Basque Country, however, have changed resoundingly. At that time, the popular ones had difficulties in drawing up their lists due to the threat of ETA terrorism, which laid down its arms 12 years ago.
The party, in any case, has highlighted that the president “has underlined on many occasions the courage of the Basque PP and its work to defend freedom”, in a “very difficult” environment with the “heirs of ETA” as partners of the National government.
“They approve decisions for all Spaniards when they have confessed to being enemies of our country,” said the PP in Madrid.
The director of Ayuso’s Cabinet, Miguel Ãngel RodrÃguez, will also be a candidate on the municipal lists of the Basque Country, symbolically and with the same objective as the president of “supporting the Basque PP in the regional elections”. In this case, RodrÃguez will close the list in the Biscayan town of Durango.
The PP is today the fifth party in the Bilbao City Council, with three councilors out of a total of 29. The polls for next March 28 place it in a similar position in terms of councilors, although they could surpass Podemos and, despite losing support, position itself as the fourth municipal force.
When in 2003 José MarÃa Aznar completed the lists of the PP in Bilbao, the popular ones were the second force, with eight councillors.
As for Durango, a town of 30,000 inhabitants governed by EH Bildu, the popular are the fifth political force. In 2019 they did not achieve any councilor, something that they had achieved in 2015.
The popular Basques have left more than 250,000 votes in the last two decades and have lost all the institutional power they came to hold, especially in Ãlava. In the last elections to the Basque Parliament, in a coalition with Ciudadanos, they obtained 60,650 votes and were the fifth party in the chamber, far from the 326,933 support they obtained in 2001, with a record participation, or the 251,743 obtained in 1998 by the Carlos Iturgaiz himself, candidate in the last Basque elections.
In those years, the populares were the second party in Bilbao, a position that they already lost in 2011. In 2015 they were the fourth party in the Biscayan capital and, finally, in 2019 they were the fifth force in votes.
This loss of support from the popular Basques has logically been accompanied by a loss of institutional power and, especially, by a loss of affiliates that has forced him to resize the party structures in the Basque Country.
