This week, the personal commitment of PSPV leader Ximo Puig to place the former Minister of Health and currently a trustee of the socialist parliamentary group in the Valencia Courts as a candidate for Alicante Mayoralty was confirmed. Main BarcelonaPresident for decades, with a priori support from the majority of the party in the city Frank Angel, although the initiative was not born from him and he had many doubts. Immediately, the so-called “Alejandrinos” (for aligning themselves with the former mayor and state secretary of Elche, Alexander Soler) an alternative candidate, former councilor announced his presentation Maria Jose Adsuar, to participate in the primaries with nothing covert, not winning, but forcing a negotiation of a quota on the municipal list, which, while enabling them to include some of their own in the group of future councilors, while preventing, or at least borderline, Francoist control over it. Nothing was said about what the socialists would do if they managed to run the city. As you can see, the PSOE is starting the electoral race for the municipal elections in Alicante with an undisputed candidate, a united party, and an encouraging project. As always, let’s go.
Barceló was neither born nor currently lives in Alicante. It is an objective fact. However, contrary to popular belief, this is not the main problem of his candidacy. Alicante is a special city in this regard. 53% of enrollees were not born there and that determines everything. Of the seven mayors it has had since the first democratic elections after the dictatorship in 1979, four were originally from elsewhere, and two even went to live outside of the mayoral term they had ruled for at least part of their tenure. There is no city center with similar characteristics. So the fact that Barceló was born and was mayor of Sax for eight years does not prevent him from running, and he is mayor of Alicante if they have given him a number. If you push me, you can always remember that thanks to the water from Sax, Alicante began solving the serious problems of supplying flow for consumption at the end of the 19th century, which the city had historically suffered from. Ironically, here’s what socialists, moderns, have to say about inter-territorial solidarity, generosity, and even trade balances. In addition, the PP can attack little on this flank: they have historically been the least likely to look at birth certificates when choosing their mayor, and in Valencia they nominate the former Torrent mayor. But it is also true that everyone who came to the Mayor’s office for this or that party without being born here has lived in Alicante for a long time and knows the city, its problems and its people well. In this sense, Barceló is literally a paratrooper. Against this, or better put it, both PSOE and PSOE will have to spend time and energy to fix this as much as they can. It seems like they just don’t have enough.
So why does Puig insist on it being him? Because he doesn’t believe the PSOE is able to agree on a name without going back to the civil war that has defined Alicante so far, and it’s not without reason. It is his chief and proven loyalty and discipline to leave white blackbirds who were never like that and bet on someone clearly “from the party”, not in vain, as he wants to correct his own previous mistakes. As he appreciates Barceló so much, he greatly appreciates his resilience, which has been amply proven since the hand of the industry, which was then led by the former minister. Leire Pajin He occupied the PSOE provincial secretary as his ability to overcome the pressures. Because if he were to play the flute, the same flexibility and his experience of negotiating with Compromís and Podemos could be decisive if the Mayoralty was in range because no one had an absolute majority in the next company: after all, Valencian socialists would have taken Alicante if they had been more adept at dealing with Ciudadanos. they are convinced that they can manage this buffalo. And, of course, also because his role as Minister of Health during the pandemic has given him a higher degree of popular knowledge and appreciation than anyone proposing an alternative could have accredited. Citizens have shown a high degree of empathy towards those who have so far faced the fight against the plague.
Barcala appears as the mayor in this match as much as he comes from the carrom. And in all games, it is the challenger who loses the points.
The problem is, everything else is about the party, except the latter, which has the same value as running for Mayor or presiding the Courts or running in Congress or the Senate. city. By winning the parliament without winning the elections again. In the presentation of the first part of Barceló’s predecessor’s political memoirs a few months ago, as party chairman and first president of the Valencian Parliament, Antonio Garcia MirallesI humorously recalled one of the questions I asked someone who suggested the name of a candidate: “But do you have a hobby?” Because knowledge is acquired in politics, but it is difficult to convey the illusion if you do not bring it from home pre-loaded. Did Barceló ever consider becoming mayor of Alicante before Ximo Puig asked him to submit his candidacy? Have you ever taken the trouble to get to know the city and its problems well, think about it and make a suggestion to your colleagues?
The situation will require Barceló to declare from the ground up that he refuses to accept quotas from anyone in making the list: neither the Ximists, nor the Francoists, nor the Alexandrians.
We all know that the answer to both questions is negative and therefore with only eight months to the election, it will now have to come down to this. It is no consolation that his popular opponent in the elections, Luis Barcala, also has the same disease. Barcala appears as the mayor in this match as much as he comes from the carrom. And it is the opponent who loses points in all games. I said earlier that the PP presented María José Catalá, the former mayor of another municipality, as its candidate for Mayor of Valencia. And that’s true. But Catalá, a former minister, district lawmaker and lawyer like Barceló, was and has been the spokesperson for the PP in that City Council this term. So Puig’s bet here is much riskier than Carlos Mazón over there. Barceló has a tradeoff: it has already been announced, calling his candidacy an “exciting challenge”. But it forces the grill to go from zero to hundred in a sigh. It doesn’t matter where you come from. where are you going, yeah
Channeling the PSOE into the second city of the Valencian Community continues to seem impossible, given that the source of all evil in Alicante, the corruption of the local group, was never attacked. And to do so through the mayoral candidacy is a repeated mistake. When the candidate was chosen by the group itself, it went wrong, in the case of Gabriel Echávarri, as with Francesc Sanguino, as imposed by Ximo Puig. At best, it is to give analgesics to a patient with gangrene. Unexpectedly and with the worst results in the history of the PSOE, Echávarri succeeded in taking over the Mayor’s Office and the party’s general secretary, but was unable to retain either one or the other. The Sanguino incident was a disaster from day one.
Without attacking the root of his illness in Alicante, the situation of his local group, the PSOE continues on its path that cannot be fixed by running for mayor.
With Barceló’s candidacy starting in the primary, the situation would require, at the very least, that all the protagonists of the absurd portray themselves openly. He made it clear that Puig made his commitment to him clear, using his authority not to impose but to motivate the assembly rather than throwing stones, and then letting Ángel Franco, always empowered by his strength, do the work. Barceló declared from scratch that he refused to accept quotas from anyone while making the list: neither the Ximists, nor the Francoists, nor the Alexandrians, simply because they existed. Do this with the best you have, not what they want to push you against. And Alejandro Soler’s leadership of his party, which he was elected to at the last state congress, putting an end to the self-destructive imperative that had already started yesterday as a member of the council in the fight against covid, which began to encourage criticism of Barceló’s administration. , take it from the bottle. Will they be able to? Because of its weight, Alicante would have deserved a strong PP and PSOE that would compete to create solid municipal governments and give the city stability it lost so many years ago. But if the top-player Puig absolutely coincides with the municipal and district elections, he will need a cohesive and mobilized party in the city that represents the second electoral bag of autonomy. And not Pancho Villa’s army that shot himself in the foot. We’ll see.
A movement with political significance
JRG
The breakfast discussion, led by Consell vice president Aitana Mas next Tuesday, was invited by the Alicante Forum, organized by INFORMATION and sponsored by the University of Alicante, the CEV employers’ association and Baleària. À Punt will be a politically relevant act, not only because of what the Compromís leader from Crevillent said, who had to face overnight with the difficult task of replacing Mónica Oltra in the regional government, but also because of the number of absenteeism and participation. . In a completely unconventional gesture, Consell chairman Ximo Puig announced his involvement and with him numerous PSOE officials. To the contrary, and apart from last-minute changes, Agriculture Minister Mireia Mollà will not accompany her party partner due to “programming issues”. The title chosen by Mas for his thesis (“Open the future with a new Botànic”) represents in itself a strong statement of intent to open a course with regional elections. And so is Ximo Puig’s support. But neither Compromís nor everyone at PSPV is so clear on Puig and Mas’s strategy to increasingly show that they will continue to march together before the polls open. And less so when the next thing is a budget call where they can paint rough again.