Pamplona was yesterday at the center of the confrontation between the PP and the PSOE after the Socialists closed an agreement with EH Bildu to remove Cristina Ibarrola, of the UPN, from the municipal government. The motion of censure, which will also go ahead thanks to the support of Geroa Bai and Contigo-Zurekin, will make Abertzale Joseba Asiron mayor on December 28. This Pamplona historian was already mayor of the city between 2015 and 2019, represents a heterodox profile, close in the past to Eusko Alkartasuna and publicly spoke out against terrorism when ETA was killing. Circumstances that may help the Socialists to justify the decision, but obviously will not lead the PP to tone down.
In fact, the possibility of a motion of censure in the Navarre capital has hovered over the plenary since the appointment of Ibarrola in June. However, it was not clear at the time whether the circumstances that would finally make it possible would take place. The first, obviously, is prior. The elections in May left, as usual in the city, a difficult scenario to govern. UPN prevailed by a narrow margin, with nine councilors, against Bildu's eight. The Socialists got five councillors, the PP got two, the Geroa Bai Basque coalition, in which the PNB participates, got two more, and Contigo-Zurekin, the brand around Podem, got one councillor.
The socialists then refused to invest, before the general elections, the candidate of Bildu and they also did not fructify third ways, such as that of making the candidate of Geroa Bai mayor, something that the PSOE saw favorably. Ibarrola took the baton of command on June 17, in a second vote and with the support of the PP. The PSOE voted blank.
Six weeks later, the general elections also offered a result that was difficult to manage, but which, nevertheless, would allow Pedro Sánchez's Government to be re-edited. Of course, the socialists would need practically everyone, except for the PP and Vox. It is here that there was a communion of interests that in the end made possible the agreement that was staged yesterday. The president needed the support of EH Bildu and, in Navarre, the socialist María Chivite also needed his abstention to be re-elected president.
The Abertzale coalition, logically, longed to govern the municipality again with more symbolic weight than it can manage. Meanwhile, UPN, aligned in Congress with the hardest line of opposition to Sánchez, was left out of the game.
It was only a matter of time before the motion against Ibarrola arrived, who has not gone out of his way to approach the socialists and make it difficult. The city was forced to live, for another year, without budgets, and the PSOE saw the moment to close the matter.
When the news of the agreement was made public, the PP could not believe it and marked the motion as "the first payment" of the "hood deal" with Bildu to get Sánchez's investiture. An agreement that, for the popular leader, demonstrates "the low moral level" of the president of the Spanish Government, which is why he warned that there will be more concessions. For this reason, the PP considers the investigation commission announced by Alberto Núñez Feijóo during the amnesty debate more necessary than ever, which Cuca Gamarra does not rule out expanding. "I don't think that Sánchez has any problem with including terrorist prisoners in an amnesty, in this one or in another," he pointed out to Club Siglo XXI.
At the moment, the president of the PP considers that the pact with Bildu removes the possibility of reaching agreements with Sánchez at the pending meeting: "If there weren't many possibilities, as of today there are even fewer ". The PP also sends a message to the PNB, because "they are the next ones". Gamarra said: "If I were the PNB, I would take the secret pact with Bildu very seriously", because Sánchez, he thinks, "will have no problem making Lehendakari Bildu's candidate".
