Yesterday, the PP won 42 of the 79 main Spanish mayoralties, 53%. In six of these councils, he pushed aside the PSOE as the party with the most votes, thanks to pacts with Vox that worked like clockwork with the generals in sight. In all of the provincial and autonomous capitals and town councils with more than 100,000 inhabitants, according to the criteria used by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces to identify the main mayors, the popular make a giant leap from their 17 seats of 2019. The PSOE falls from 42 to 23 municipalities, with a balance that improved a little in Barcelona, since otherwise Las Palmas would be its most populated municipality. The area of Sumar drops from three mayoralties to one, which is that of IU in Zamora, and nationalism goes from eight to six.
Those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo maintain their shadow areas in Catalonia, Euskadi and also in this case Galicia, since of their main councils they govern just one, Badalona. On the other hand, in the rest of the territory only 17 out of 58 have escaped them, they have achieved 71%.
ANDALUSIA
Dos Hermanas, the town of Seville without cousins
This municipality of 137,000 inhabitants was yesterday like the museum of the past glories of the Andalusian PSOE, site of the legendary meetings of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra. It is the only one of the thirteen most important Andalusian councils that is not chaired by the PP, alone or with Vox.
CASTLE-LA MANCHA
In Talavera de la Reina, "for God and for Spain"
Talavera, with its 83,000, had an earlier meeting than the rest of the main municipalities where the PP needed Vox's vote, to block the way to the PSOE and break the principle of the list with the most votes that Feijóo always invokes. "For God and for Spain", swore the four ultra councilors, which sounded like a message from the grave. As in Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, Elche, Jaén and Guadalajara, they showed that the block on the right seems compact against the 23-J.
AUSTRIAS
A departure from the closet against the Gijón tripartite with Vox
An agreement between Fòrum Astúries, PP and Vox gave the mayorship to Carmen Moryñón, despite the fact that the list with the most votes was that of the PSOE. The councilor of Esquerra Unida Javier Suárez Llana came out of the closet yesterday to make his homosexuality explicit for the first time in public in the plenum in which Vox's entry into the local government of Gijón was consummated, despite the fact that the mayor, Carmen Moriyón, had reiterated that it would not happen. Llana warned against a "city of hate" in which the local government "will serve as an amplifier of a discourse that says I am not normal to love another man".
GALICIA
The PP agrees with Jácome, who reported it to the Prosecutor's Office in May
Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, localist mayor of Ourense, and the PP form a bombproof duo. Or, at the very least, of complaints before the Prosecutor's Office like the one that the popular people presented in May for the audios in which Jácome talked about bribes. The general secretary of the PPdeG, Paula Prado, signed an agreement with him yesterday, so that the list with the most votes, that of Jácome, governs 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 entering and leaving the government. In Galicia, the novelty is that the BNG governs Santiago, while the PP gets an urban mayor's office, that of Ferrol, with only 64,000 inhabitants.
CASTILE AND LEÓN
Yolanda Díaz just adds up
in Zamora, again with Guarido
The only one of the main Spanish mayors of the conglomerate led by Yolanda Díaz, Sumar, is in one of the most unexpected places, the theoretically conservative Zamora. It had already been happening since 2015 with Esquerra Unida, the party of Mayor Francisco Guarido, who is starting his third term. The re-election contrasts with the downfalls of Ada Colau in Barcelona and Joan Ribó in Valencia, and even José María González Kichi in Cadiz.
THE BASQUE
The PP stopped Bildu in Vitoria and Durango with a party
And Durango was a party, in this Biscayan town Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the chief of staff of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and in the past spokesperson for the government of José María Aznar. Rodríguez – informs Ander Goyoaga – accompanied the PP councilor, who voted for the PNB mayor to block EH Bildu. It was the same strategy that the popular people adopted in Vitoria and that awarded the baton to the socialist Maider Etxebarria. These movements of the PP will have continuity in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. The PSOE clarifies for the facts that its Basque ally is the PNB, which may indeed cause more wear and tear.
NAVARRE
UPN benefits from the veto of the Abertzale left
If in Vitoria Bildu was the most voted force, which required that vote of the PP, in Pamplona it was the second, at the head of the center-left and behind UPN, which obtained the baton of command through Cristina Ibarrola. The PSOE did not give its support to Bildu, which had also not accepted the solution of crowning Geroa-Bai. The position of the PSOE creates a problem in the face of the investiture of the socialist María Chivite as president of Navarre. He will need the abstention of EH Bildu, who had claimed his support in Pamplona and in other localities. The socialists, however, insist that their allies in Navarre are the coalition Geroa Bai and Contigo/Zurekin; not EH Bildu. The panorama, in any case, will be clarified beyond July 23.
VALENCIA
Mayoress Catalá, of the PP, closes the Botanical cycle
The cycle that began in 2015 and that brought the socialist Ximo Puig to the presidency of the Valencian Generalitat after the Botanic pact also closes in the capital of the community, where the PP, under the guidance of María José Catalá, has taken the mayoralty to Joan Ribó, from Compromís. Catalá was elected mayor yesterday and will govern in the minority after rejecting a pact with Vox that would have given her an absolute majority in a plenum of 33 councillors. In the constitution of the new municipal corporation, some of the PSPV and Compromís councilors promised the position with singular 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 that Catalá was automatically proclaimed mayor, since she led the candidacy with the most votes . In her speech, with numerous allusions to Joaquín Sorolla, the new popular mayor of Valencia assured that the city is starting "a new stage" and announced that a "second transformation" will be launched. "Valencia needs firm leadership and a strong footing again, so that we are heard, respected and admired", said the new mayoress.
ESTREMADURA
Always Don Benito, unique mayorship and merger in danger
Don Benito now has a mayoress, María Fernanda Sánchez, from Semper Don Benito, a group that had been opposed to the merger of this Extremadura town 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 very little, and now with the new mayoress, endorsed by the PP, uncertainty opens up.
