The PP candidate for Mayor of Valencia and winner of the past elections on 28-M, María José Catalá, has been appointed this Saturday as the first mayor of the city with a simple majority in the plenary session for the constitution of the new local corporation after the elections on May 28. Catalá has only had the votes of the 13 councilors of her formation and without the four of Vox, who have supported her own candidate.
Catalá has received the staff of command that accredits her as mayoress from her predecessor, Joan Ribó. The latter, however, both in 2015 and in 2019 dispensed with this attribute that accredited him as the first municipal official. Then, Ribó asked the general secretary of the City Council to keep it because he understood that he represented a way of governing with which he did not identify himself and assured that he did not need “neither a rod nor a command”.
With the votes of the PP, the head of the list of this formation has obtained the support of 13 of the 33 councilors that make up the City Council, which grants it a simple majority. The representatives of the rest of the municipal groups, the nine from Compromís, the seven from the PSPV and the four from Vox have voted for their respective candidates, Joan Ribó, Sandra Gómez and José Manuel Badenas.
Badenas has been very critical of Català in his speech for not integrating the PP with the councilors of Abascal’s party and has said that “his decision to govern in a minority is not aimed at the common good, it cannot be clearly said that it is a government moral, it is an amoral government, because it can only be obtained because the law allows it without trying to reach a stable agreement with whom it can”.
Catalá has been sworn in with the usual formula, in Spanish, and has thus pledged, out of his “conscience and honour”, to fulfill the “obligations” corresponding to his position, with “respect and loyalty to the King” and to “keep the Constitution as a fundamental norm”, as well as the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Community.
The end of the vote and the declaration of Catalá as first mayor were once again greeted with applause, both in the municipal chamber and in the City Hall’s Crystal Hall, a place where some guests followed the session.
(((There will be expansion)))
