The great survivor of autonomous Spain and the most publicized politician bit the dust yesterday. Miguel Ángel Revilla lost the presidency of Cantabria, which he held for 16 years, in addition to another 8 as vice president and 40 in total as deputy. The popular María José Sáenz de Buruaga will be the next regional president in an essential alliance with Vox, taking advantage of the strong fall of Revilla's Cantabrian Regional Party (PRC) and the failure of Podemos and Izquierda Unida in their attempt to return to power with a powerful rise. Parliament.
El Hormiguero can be omnipotent in the fight for hearings, but not in the fight for votes in a small autonomous community. Revilla in recent years had taken the big leap. In 2019 he managed to make the PRC the most voted force for the first time. And from his great times of La Sexta Noche, he went on to some even more visible and glorious from his point of view in the Pablo Motos program. He did not hesitate to launch himself into the electoral arena at the age of 80 and managed difficultly to worsen the case of corruption that is shaking his government, that of the bites on the roads.
When the Minister of Public Works José Luis Gochicoa had to resign, with the head of the highway service behind bars, Revilla organized a tribute banquet for 1,000 people. The politician did it, moreover, who always distinguished himself by denouncing on television and in his books the corruption of other political forces.
A defeat of a mythological politician like the one that Revilla was already in the framework of the regional landscape is not produced by a single factor. The situation was unfavorable for him, since he promoted the Cantabrian right, fearsome in the sweet moments of the conservatives in Spain. Age did not help him. If he won, he would be in a position to surpass the record of Manuel Fraga, who ruled until 82.
The delay in infrastructure investments that he claimed to have taken from the central government hurt him. He gave up 6 deputies and his partner, the PSOE, surpassed him in votes, while the 15 seats of the PP and the 4 of Vox open a new era in Cantabria, after the lord of the anchovies.
