Of joke and joke. This is how some residents of Salobreña define the fact that the Vox candidate to preside over the Junta de Andalucía, Macarena Olona, has registered in the town on the tropical coast of Granada to be able to attend these elections, circumventing the requirements established by the Junta Electoral. Everyone seems to agree on three key points: on the one hand, the controversy caused by the registration of the lawyer from Alicante in the register is giving publicity to the people; on the other hand, the fact that Olona has become her most famous neighbor will not have repercussions on the vote of the Salobreneños; and, finally, nobody knows her or has seen her around the area.
The State attorney has been in the census for more than two months, the minimum time set by the Board for any citizen to be eligible for the candidacy. Once this requirement was met, neither the town hall, which began the process of deregistration from the census as it was unable to verify that he habitually resided in the town, nor the appeal filed by Andaluces Levantaos before the Board for the same reason (and which was dismissed). They were able to stop it.
Those of Abascal have managed to keep the iron lady of the party as the head of the list, the winning horse that in a short time has managed to mobilize in Andalusia a part of the electorate that was disenchanted, both on the left and on the right. However, Salobreña resists him.
"This does not directly affect the people," says José Antonio, the manager of one of the beach bars overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, who says he has never come across the candidate on the streets of the city. He is one of those who defend that "all free advertising is welcome" and that it is never too much to talk about the city, although he insists that Salobreña was already located on the map long before the ultra-nationalist burst onto the pitch. . “It is true that it was a surprise for us”, he declares while pointing out that it was a “boom” that has been deflating until it has become “another joke”. However, for weeks the issue jumped from table to table in his place, becoming the star topic. Her most famous neighbor was a complete stranger to most of the neighbors.
Diego, owner of a cafeteria located in an urbanization frequented by tourists, agrees in pointing out that the controversy has generated some curiosity among locals and strangers. “It is free publicity for the people and, even for this reason, it puts us on the map”, since he points out that if Olona is complying with the law “there is no more to talk about the matter”, whether you like it or not. . "Those from Vox will be voted for by those resentful of the PP," he declares, but considers that it will not alter the course of politics in the town.
“I doubt that Olona will get people to vote more for Vox. Here he will not have support”, declares the employee of a hairdresser in the city who prefers to remain anonymous. "It's a joke that he calls himself 'Macarena de Salobreña' when he has never set foot in the town in his life," he explains, echoing that politics "was only seen when he came to denounce the mayor in the Civil Guard" . "That the name of the town is associated with a party like Vox has pissed off a lot of people," he says, "of course it is publicity, but in Salobreña there are many other things that could be used to talk about us before about it."
Salobreña, a city based on the tropical coast of Granada with just over 12,000 inhabitants, has traditionally had socialist governments. It is currently governed by María Eugenia Rufino, who added to the 7 councilors obtained after the last exam before the citizens the favor of two IU representatives with whom she formed a government.
The municipal elections of 2019 made a dent in the great formations. Of the 17 mayors that make up the consistory, the PSOE lost two councilors, going from 9 to 7, while the PP divided the support of the electorate in half with Cs, going from having 4 seats in the plenary sessions to only 2. For the first time Once, Vox broke into the town hall obtaining a mayor with 6.98% of the votes and 399 ballots in his favor. The same thing happened in other parts of the province, where Abascal's formation was already beginning to introduce its policies thanks to 28 councilors scattered in 21 municipalities, most of the coast and the towns of the Granada belt.
According to the CIS barometer released last week, in the regional elections Granada would contribute 2 to 3 parliamentarians to the ultra-nationalist formation, given that the range it handles is 17 to 21 seats throughout the region. Perhaps those of Vox have determined that they can increase the number of followers in this area of Andalusia and, perhaps, this has been the reason why Macarena, also known on social networks as 'Macarena de Salobreña' or 'Macarena de Graná ', I would like to kick off the campaign in the capital of La Alhambra with the traditional posting of posters.
The attempts to extinguish the controversy generated by the registration of Olona are not having the desired effect. This Monday, Andaluces Levantaos insisted that he was not willing to lower his arms in the face of what they consider an "injustice." “Our autonomy is at stake and we are not going to allow everything achieved by our parents and grandparents from the transition to the present to be put at stake,” it read in the statement issued by this formation, since it denounced the “passivity of the rest of the formations.
It has been of little use that the owner of the house where Olona appears as a regular resident, the president of Vox-Granada, Manuel Martín, declared that his partner spends some seasons in Salobreña to justify his decision to register here. “I have no way of knowing when she comes or not” to this property because “it is large enough (21 rooms) so that several people can live and not meet,” she told Granada Hoy, “she has keys and comes and goes when she thinks appropriate. ” I “am not the goalkeeper of La que se avecina”.
At the moment, the left-wing formation has already announced that it will fight to prevent Olona from having a single opportunity to take over a position in the Junta de Andalucía after 19-J. And, apparently, in Salobreña, there are many others who are not proud of their most popular neighbor either.
It has been the members of Vox-Salobreña who have denounced through social networks that the posters where the candidate appears are being torn down in an act of vandalism that they have described as "intolerance"
