The PNV already has a replacement for Iñigo Urkullu as a candidate for lehendakari for the Basque elections that will be held this spring. This is Imanol Pradales from Biscay, 48 years old and regional deputy in Bizkaia for Infrastructure. Andoni Ortuzar, president of the PNV Executive, has confirmed the decision through a video.
Born in Santurtzi in 1975, Imanol Pradales has a Doctor in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Deusto. He has also been a professor at the University of Deusto, on leave since 2007. At said university he also held management positions, being the promoter and general director of DeustuLan, the Employment Center.
Between 2007 and 2011, Pradales was managing director of Bizkaia
Between July 2011 and June 2015 he was Deputy for Economic Promotion. From July 2015 to the present he has been the Deputy for Infrastructure and Territorial Development.
The president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, has recorded a video confirming that his party will propose Imanol Pradales as a candidate for lehendakari, after the news has been leaked to El Correo.
Just 24 hours earlier, the same media published that the PNV had informed Iñigo Urkullu that it did not count on him as a candidate for the Basque elections next spring.
The PNV avoided officially confirming the news, although fully reliable sources confirmed it to this medium. Last weekend La Vanguardia had published that the PNV was considering replacing Iñigo Urkullu with an alternative candidate.
The objective of this movement is to promote a coup that can excite and mobilize the electorate, after the electoral setbacks of May and July.
Pradales is a relatively well-known politician in Bizkaia, after more than a decade in the successive government teams of the Provincial Council, but he is unknown outside this territory. Making it known in Gipuzkoa and Álava will be one of the challenges for the jeltzales in the coming months, since in next spring’s elections 25 seats will be distributed for each electoral district. That is to say, the demographic weight of Bizkaia is not an advantage for the eventual candidacy of Pradales, which has yet to be confirmed in the internal process of the PNV.
Linked to the economic sphere and large projects, he represents a different profile from that of Iñigo Urkullu, a Christian Democrat who during his successive mandates has been calling for a “Basque model of sustainable human development.”
Imanol Pradales, in any case, represents above all a generational change with respect to Iñigo Urkullu, Aitor Esteban and Andoni Ortuzar, the trident that has starred in the last decade of Basque politics and that led the party to its best results since the split with Eusko Alkartasuna (1986). The president of the EBB has already announced that he will leave the party next summer.
Despite the doubts that the last elections have generated, the EBB is determined to face the generational change. They tried it, with uneven results, in the municipal and provincial elections in May, also seeking the arrival of more women to command positions in the Basque institutional framework.
Now, the decision to relieve Urkullu represents an obvious bet in that direction, although it also implies taking a high risk. The fight with EH Bildu has been equalized and now, imminently, it will be the nationalist coalition that will make a move.
Arnaldo Otegi has already announced his willingness to run for re-election as general coordinator of the coalition in the next EH Bildu Congress. This Monday he will communicate to the party’s political table his thoughts on the possibility of being a candidate in the elections to the Basque Parliament next spring. The most likely thing is that he will convey his refusal to them, which would open the doors to a horizon of bicephaly, with Otegi himself as general coordinator and an alternative candidate in the electoral struggle.
These twists in the script in Basque politics and the gradual entry of new protagonists lead to a new cycle that, for the moment, is born marked by the balanced struggle between EH Bildu and the PNV, a fight that is being settled both in the Basque Country and in Congress, with the drifts that this implies.
