said Winston Churchill The Balkans produce more history than the world can digest. In the Valencian Community, Vega Baja is the Balkans. And our Sarajevo is Orihuela.
The theater of operations over the centuries, in all the wars waged by Carthaginians and Romans, Byzantines and Visigoths, Moroccans and Christians, Castiles and Aragonians, Austrians and Bourbons, Carlists or Elizabethans, the capital of Segura has never had a peaceful history, it has always been. took part in all the bombardments: it was the seat of Parliament, where the Catholic Monarchs gathered to prepare the attack on Granada, the German stronghold in their revolt against the emperor. CarlosWhen is the capital of the kingdom Felipe V He wanted to punish Valencia and even declared the canton in revolt against the First Republic. It is true that it emerged unscathed from the War of Independence, the exception that confirms the rule, although its remote location from the front and its status as a bunker and hospital for international brigades allowed it to be more so in the Civil War. He did not escape either the uncontrolled violence of the rear guard, nor the ruthless systematic pressure on one of his sons, the poet, who came later. Miguel Hernandez, to one of his most distinguished victims. Not to mention the fights between the priests, the fourth city with the most churches in Spain: In the end, Orihuela had to compromise, so the bishops moved their official residence to Alicante. His name, however, continues to permeate the diocese, whose cathedral is El Salvador’s Orihuela. This is not the only thing he surrendered: not only did he become the capital of the prefecture and the prefecture, he also lost both privileges. It was also the center of one of the first universities in Spain, the second university founded by the former Kingdom of Valencia in the middle of the 16th century. This is antiquity with good intentions. Antonio Gil Olcina They managed to transfer him to the University of Alicante and that’s why the Lucentian campus has the Orcelitan reference on its shield.
You may be wondering what the point of this long exordium is, most of its content can be found on Google without much effort. To give you a no-confidence motion when we speak of Orihuela for the third, fourth or fifth time in its recent democratic history (all of which have been successful or have been declared since 1979). So it’s not just any city, it doesn’t have a simple past. On the contrary, Orihuela is a symbolic municipality with a colorful as well as complex past for many reasons. And local politics go hand in hand with an urban tradition whose Latin motto reminds us that a sword at hand is always good.
Orihuela is faithful to a staggering history. Since 1979, it has had eight mayors, four progressive and four from the PP, one of whom was imprisoned and registered several censors.
There are many obvious things and issues we’ve heard since PSOE and Cambiemos (Podemos’s local transcript) announced mid-week that they had reached an agreement with Ciudadanos, so that the councilors who were in power with the PP until Wednesday agreed with the PP. , switch sides and vote to support a coup that places the socialist candidate for mayor, Caroline Gracekeeping them in that government, in which they will sleep on the right one day, and get up on the left the next, which is certainly the best example of a jacket change that can be found.
The fact that Orihuela is a conservative municipality is one of those obvious things. It is difficult to find a city where the primary sector is the most important and where the right-wing vote is not a majority, as the socialists in the province of Alicante run the main industrial municipalities. Elche, Elda or Alcoi. But its first mayor, Francisco García Ortuño, with the initials of UCD, limped from the centre-left. The second and third were socialists. By the party of one of the three, the other two (later PSOE and Vincent Escudero also a socialist) was destroyed by no-confidence motions. There was one more progressive mayor who died politically in bed. Montserrate GuillenFrom Los Verdes, which reigned between 2011 and 2015.
At these intervals, PP always ruled. A total of 32 of the 43 years we have been in since the first municipal elections. It has done so continuously since 1986. Louis Ferdinand Cartagena He snatched the Mayoralty from the socialist Vicente Escudero (also through a motion of no confidence) until he lost his balance in 2011. Monica Lorente already harassed on charges of “Brugal case”. And he regained power in 2015. José Emilio Bascuñana He is the third doctor to be the mayor of this council, which looks more like an outpatient clinic than a town hall. Bascuñana is the eighth mayor owned by Democracia Orihuela, currently two more than Elche and one more than Alicante. But the City Council has always been a victim of instability. The UCD was broken when he was in government, the PSOE was broken several times, and the PP itself was broken, the PP was broken at the end of the nineties of the last century, when it was part of the team of five popular mayors. Jose Manuel Medinaled by the then Member of the Urbanism Council, Jesus Ferrandez, left the party and joined the co-ed group, spawning cases of corruption that a few years later would imprison the aforementioned Luis Fernando Cartagena and mark the beginning of a long string of robberies that we will do later at all levels. Even if at one point it is said that Orihuela was the base from which the Community began its conquest until the PP settled in Palau. Edward Zaplana We must also acknowledge that Orihuela is where the beginning of the end begins.
Orihuelica del Senor has not one, but two lords. Businessman Ángel Fenoll and lawyer José Alcántara. Every time they go to war, City Council goes bankrupt
So it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in a place where the average life expectancy of mayors is just over five years, where more are charged with serious crimes than was spent on perfect impeachment, and all three are innocent. was convicted by the courts and one was sentenced, as said earlier, to prison. Even the shadow process that brought Orihuela back to the pages of politics and events is nothing new. Because if there is a constant in the Orihuela administration, it is not the dominance of the PP, but the course of the two citizens who are not top of the list. Business man angel Phenol and lawyer and businessman José Alcantara. They are the ones who have conditioned municipal politics for decades, using mayors and councilors only as cannon fodder for their conflict. With whom did the PSOE negotiate the no-confidence motion of Ciudadanos—nobody knows what it is anymore, but everybody knows it will disappear in the next election—because its councilors backed the PP government, and now will they save PSOE and Podemos/Cambiemos? With the regional address of this monstrosity? No. Nationally, maybe? Anyone. with Alcantara. Likewise, as stated in a few sentences, PP was trained for years to win Fenoll’s fund and staff selections. Orihuelica del Senor has not one, but two lords. And every time their fight gets out of hand, the City Council goes bankrupt.
The PP is not afraid of the agreement in the Provincial Council or the Alicante municipal government and is willing to expose all the political and personal artillery if the remnants of the Cs move El Campello.
If losing a Mayor’s Office is a meal of pleasure to any party, staying without PP in Orihuela is a first-degree suffocation. But objectively, one year before the next elections, the damage is limited. Neither Diputación, nor the Alicante City Council, nor the public are in danger of taking all the artillery (political and personal) if the remnants of the oranges try to seriously move the El Campello tab. And on that occasion, if the movement was successful (it’s Orihuela, so it’s okay not to trust the apparent), the outgoing mayor was not a religious saint of his party, as evidenced by the fact. mason prevented him from taking over the local presidency a few months ago and imposed a ruler. So now the popular leadership will have a free hand to reorganize the organization and look for a new candidate. There is no evil that does not come for good, your new leader will think. As for PSOE, the benefit from the operation remains to be seen. The person who will be sworn in as mayor will be with some strange (and in some cases, unreliable) companions in the Government. With powerful enemies within his own party. Antonio Zapata is a refugee socialist legislator active in the party who managed to return to the party by deceiving himself in the last legislature and then changing his membership card (funny stuff that only happens in PSOE). Alongside the winners of the last provincial congress, now the palmero did not travel to stay. Who wins then? Look, unspoken. In the May 2019 municipal elections, Vox debuted with two councilors, but added the popular ones with 33.83% of the vote, while the PP received only 6.88% of the vote, and the fifth political force behind the PSOE, Ciudadanos and Cambiemos. 23.22 percent of Socialists, 19.13 percent of Ciudadanos, or the commendable 13.16 percent of the local Podemos brand. But just six years later, in the November general election, Vox became the second most-voted power in Orihuela, nearly quadrupling its vote share, beating all parties except the PP. So what they’re doing now between them is to put a silver bridge on the Mayoralty of Alicante’s only national vice-president, the far-right, who is definitely a retired general from Orihuela. Alcantara Bridge. damn grace.
Lessons from an acquittal
JRG
The Alicante State Court announced the final sentence this week, acquitting economist Manuel Bonilla, the former director of Suma (Diputación tax office), of splitting contracts, for which he was charged and accused. He sought disqualification for 12 years. Thus ends a judicial, professional and above all personal ordeal that should never have happened, which began in 2019 with an anonymous complaint received by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, whose investigation led to Bonilla’s abrupt dismissal.
During the hearing, the prosecutor suggested that this complaint may have resulted from a showdown from someone inside Suma who wanted to get rid of her director. From where does an unanswered question arises: and if there are these indications, why was that line not investigated and the case continued as if it didn’t exist, to the point where the prosecutor’s office raised them at the hearing?
However, the Bonilla problem brings with it other reflections. First, it points to the need to review regulations on the division of contracts in the Administration, which is a constant source of controversy and puts politicians and senior officials in trouble every day. Second, it’s about how hard we make it for highly trained professionals to agree to devote time to public service. Bonilla tried to modernize Suma and they went after him. He was acquitted, but lost his job, fame and health in the process. But the hunters got what they were looking for: take it apart and make the next one think about it. We’re going bad.