The PP conquered yesterday 42 of the 79 main Spanish mayors, 53%. In six of them it separated the PSOE as the party with the most votes, thanks to some agreements with Vox that worked like clockwork with the generals in sight. In the provincial and autonomous capitals as a whole and in town halls with more than 100,000 inhabitants, according to the criteria used by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces to identify the main mayoralties, the popular ones take a giant leap from their 17 seats in the 2019. The PSOE falls from 42 to 23 municipalities, with a balance that fixed something in Barcelona, ??otherwise Las Palmas would be its most populous municipality. Sumar space drops from three mayors to one, which is the IU in Zamora and nationalism goes from eight to six.
Those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo maintain their shadow areas of Catalonia, Euskadi and also in this case Galicia, since only one of its main consistories governs, Badalona. On the other hand, in the rest of the territory only 17 of 58 escaped them, taking 71%.
ANDALUSIA
Dos Hermanas, the town of Seville without cousins
This Sevillian municipality of 137,000 inhabitants was left yesterday as the museum of the past glories of the Andalusian PSOE, place of the legendary rallies of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra. It is the only one of the thirteen largest Andalusian municipalities that is not chaired by the PP, alone or with Vox.
CASTILLA LA MANCHA
In Talavera de la Reina, “for God and for Spain”
Talavera, with its 83,000, had an earlier plenary session among the main municipalities in which the PP needed Vox’s vote, to block the way for the PSOE, breaking the principle of the most voted list that Feijóo always invokes. “For God and for Spain”, swore the four ultras mayors, in what sounded like a message from beyond the grave. As in Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, Elx, Jaén and Guadalajara, they showed that the block on the right seems compact before 23-J.
ASTURIAS
A coming out of the closet against the Gijón tripartite with Vox
In Gijón, an agreement between Foro Asturias, Vox and PP gave the mayoralty to Carmen Moryñón (Foro Asturias), despite the fact that the PSOE was the list with the most votes. The councilor of Izquierda Unida Javier Suárez Llana came out of the closet yesterday to make his homosexuality explicit for the first time in public in the plenary session in which Vox’s entry into local government was consummated, despite the fact that the already mayoress, Moriyón, had reiterated that she did not would happen. Llana warned against a “city of hate” in which the local government “will serve as an amplifier for a discourse that says that I am not normal for loving another man.”
GALICIA
The PP agrees with Jácome, whom he denounced in May at the Prosecutor’s Office
Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, local mayor of Ourense, and the PP form a bomb-proof pairing. Or at least complaints to the Prosecutor’s Office, such as the one that the popular ones presented in May for the audios in which Jácome spoke of bites. The general secretary of the PPdeG, Paula Prado, signed an agreement with him yesterday, so that the most voted list, that of Jácome, governs in the City Council, and in the Provincial Council, the one with the most deputies, the popular one. They already agreed four years ago and the PP was going in and out of the government. In Galicia, the novelty is that the BNG governs Santiago, while the PP achieves an urban mayor’s office, that of Ferrol, with only 64,000 inhabitants.
CASTILE AND LEON
Yolanda Díaz only adds in Zamora, with Guarido again
The only one of the main Spanish mayors of the conglomerate led by Yolanda Díaz. Sumar, is located in one of the most unexpected places, the theoretically conservative Zamora. It was already happening since 2015 with Izquierda Unida, the party of mayor Francisco Guarido, who is beginning his third term. Her re-election contrasts with the falls of Ada Colau in Barcelona and Joan Ribó in Valencia and even José María González Kichi in Cádiz.
THE BASQUE
The PP stopped Bildu in Vitoria and Durango, with a party
And Durango was a party, came to say yesterday in this Biscayan town of almost 30,000 inhabitants Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the chief of staff of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and in the past spokesman for the Government of José María Aznar . Rodríguez – reports Ander Goyoaga – wrapped up the PP councilor, who voted for the PNV mayoress to block the way to Bildu. It was the same strategy that the popular ones adopted in Vitoria and that granted the baton of command to the socialist Maider Etxebarria. These movements of the Popular Party will continue in the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council. The PSOE clarifies through the facts that its Basque ally is the PNV, which may cost more wear and tear.
NAVARRE
UPN benefits from the veto of the abertzale left
If in Vitoria Bildu was the force with the most votes, which required that PP vote, in Pamplona it was the second, in front of the center-left and behind UPN, which took control of the baton through Cristina Ibarrola. The PSOE did not give its support to Bildu, who had not accepted the solution of crowning Geroa-Bai either. The position of the PSOE creates a problem with regard to the investiture of the socialist María Chivite as president of Navarra. She will need the abstention of EH Bildu, who had asked for her support in Pamplona and other towns. The Socialists, however, insist that their allies in Navarra are the Geroa Bai and Contigo/Zurekin coalition; not EH Bildu. The panorama, in any case, will become clear beyond July 23.
VALENCIA
Mayoress Catalá, of the PP, closes the Botanic cycle
The cycle that began in 2015 and that led the socialist Ximo Puig to the presidency of the Valencian Generalitat after the Botànic pact also closed in the capital of the community, where the PP, led by María José Catalá, has snatched the mayor’s office to Joan Ribó, from Compromís. Catalá was elected mayor yesterday and she will govern in a minority by rejecting a pact with Vox that would have given her an absolute majority in a plenary session of 33 councilors. In the constitution of the new municipal corporation, some of the PSPV and Compromís councilors promised the position with unique additions to the protocol formula to defend victims of gender violence, in a show of rejection of Vox’s positions. As planned, each group voted for its candidate (PP, 13; Compromís, 9; PSPV-PSOE, 7, and Vox, 4), so Catalá was automatically proclaimed mayor by leading the candidacy with the most votes. In her speech, with numerous allusions to Joaquín Sorolla, the new popular mayoress of Valencia assured that the city is beginning “a new canvas” and announced that a “second transformation” will be launched. “València needs firm leadership and stomping again, so that we are heard, respected and admired,” said the newly elected.
ESTREMADURA
Always Don Benito, unique mayor’s office and merger in danger
Don Benito now has a mayoress, María Fernanda Sánchez, from Siempre Don Benito, a formation that had been opposed to the merger of this town in Extremadura with neighboring Villanueva de la Serena, which would form a municipality of more than 60,000 inhabitants and which would constitute the most ambitious municipal union of recent times. In Don Benito the merger was approved in a referendum by the hairs, and now, with the new mayoress, supported by the PP, uncertainty opens.
