For the 99-year-old to be the least in the history of the longest-serving mayor of this 28-M, there must be many more incentives. And boy yes there are. Hostility, tripping, lineages, unnatural alliances, common front... Ingredients would give for a national western, although, as summarized by María del Rosario Resta, Charito (Grandmothers by Patones), without final script twist. "At the age that I am, they are not going to throw me off the cliff."
The town of Patones, located to the north of the Community of Madrid, is divided into two urban nuclei separated by two kilometers of road that allow us to overcome a drop of more than 115 meters in height. Patones de Abajo, in which practically all of its neighbors reside. And Patones de Arriba, made up of several dozen houses that were once abandoned until, half a century ago, they were bought and restored by outsiders who, like Charito, fell in love with their beauty.
"We were not visionaries, because the charm of the place is undeniable. But we were a bit crazy, probably the result of our youth," he points out in the living room of his house where the taste for literature and painting is so overwhelming that whoever puts a standing inside he comes out to speak in a low voice as in a library or art gallery.
"But mine was a crush. The same day I found out," recalls Charito, "I told my husband: I don't want to leave here without buying one of these houses. So that same afternoon we looked for the owners and It turns out that they almost fought to see who would sell it to us. They didn't want them at all and we paid 125 pesetas for one of them that we later expanded," he says proudly.
A right-wing voter, and a declared sympathizer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, she cannot find anyone to represent her in the town despite the fact that, in addition to the PSOE -currently in the municipal government-, PP and Vox also present themselves. "Here things don't work like in other places. Here there are two sides. When some govern, they do so for their own interests. And when others govern, they try to undo everything to benefit from what they can. Without looking for the good of the people nor for doing things with a head", he points out.
And who does not agree with any of these options? "There are few," he answers quickly, "because here things go by families, like the Melones, I don't even know how many there are. And for one or two there are, who don't opt for anyone, as it turns out that they have them isolated, without even access to running water since the installation, look what a coincidence, ends just before reaching his house. And there he is, bringing tankers from time to time to fill his reserves. An injustice for which he cries out raising his tone: "But how can that be possible?".
The same happens with Patones de Arriba where, in addition to water, before there was no electricity. "We had to fight it for many years," recalls Charito. "And, meanwhile, we kept fixing our houses as best we could, bringing water and materials up and down the steep slopes. They didn't mind selling us what they didn't value, but now they don't want us sticking our heads out to do it grow. That yes, of the money nor trace".
Charito refers to the economic endowments that the City Council has received since Patones de Arriba was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in 1999. "It is supposed to be money to take care of the place and to attract tourists who fill the more than 15 restaurants that open every weekend They are the salvation of this area, but here nobody improves anything".
Pissed off with it, she rode with her neighbors and friends Abuelas por Patones. A formation that achieved a councilor's act thanks to the fifty voters of Patones de Arriba who are, at the same time, its ground and its electoral ceiling. that they didn't help a person over 90 to access the plenary session, is that they put me in a chair with wheels that, when I sat down, went backwards. From their scared faces, I think that's when they realized that they had gone too far ", says Charito.
Since then he tries to make known to the whole world what he understands as an injustice. He even appeared at the very headquarters of the regional government of Puerta del Sol seeing that they did not give him an appointment. "I will continue to do it even if they veto me, as has happened on some television and radio stations. I must be very annoying," she adds with a Galician backlash despite her Bilbao roots.
Its program includes the burying of the lighting wiring and a new parking lot. "But well done and not Spanish" as he says it is the project of the socialist mayor. It has to be "broad and comfortable, to get in and out of the car easily, and with windows from which you can see nature... so that tourists continue to come. And with a cafeteria, which not everyone can afford a restaurant just like that," he says.
But the mayor did not send the project to the Community of Madrid and he had to manage to communicate it to the regional president. "I found out that Ayuso was going to come to town on a Saturday. But nobody confirmed it to me, neither on one side nor on the other. I insisted and they told me that nothing at all. Even so, I took the car, because that day I I was in Burgos, and here I planted myself".
Charito stood between Ayuso, "who was looking to one side," and the socialist mayor of Patones, "who was looking the other way." "What an image, but I grabbed them by the arm and told my idea. If it's not for me, who didn't gain anything with this politics, it's for the people and for the tourists," he concludes. Those tourists who, in her opinion, are the ones who can restore its splendor to this "paradise" that Charito, Patones' grandmother, fell in love with at first sight.
