2023-07-14 13:19:36
The new president of the Junta de Extremadura, María Guardiola, this Friday in the Assembly of Extremadura. Jero Morales (EFE)
María Guardiola, 44, from Cáceres, is already president of the Junta de Extremadura after losing the elections on May 28, refusing to agree with Vox on June 20 and, finally, integrating them into her own Executive with a council —Forest Management and Mundo Rural—just a week later. This Friday, the 28 deputies from her party, the PP, and the five from Vox, with which she will govern in coalition, supported her. The 28 socialist representatives and the four of Podemos have opposed it. Guardiola thus becomes the fourth president of Extremadura after Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra (PSOE), José Antonio Monago (PP) and Guillermo Fernández Vara (PSOE) and the first woman in office.
With this political roller coaster of ups and downs between PP and Vox —not exempt from soap opera—, with secret meetings, WhatsApp exchanges, pressures and amendments, the popular retake power in a region of more than a million inhabitants and traditionally progressive. The PSOE has always governed this community, since the first democratic elections, in 1983, and except for the four years of the popular Monago (2011-2015), who won the presidency thanks to the abstention of Izquierda Unida. Extremadura was always a laboratory for pacts. Also the place where Vox placed its first deputy in Spain and also the first territory where PP, Vox and Ciudadanos sealed their first government agreement, giving entry to the ultra formation with a Department in Badajoz in 2019.
Vox spokesman, Ángel Pelayo Gordillo, this Friday. Jero Morales (EFE)
Guardiola, with a degree in Business Administration, passed two oppositions for the Board and made a technical career as a qualified civil servant in various positions. She was not very interested in politics, although she always sympathized with the PP. She did not join until 2012, already 36 years old, when the Government of the popular Monago appointed her General Secretary of Economy and Finance. She is a politician who claims to be a new face, but she comes from eight years as a councilor in Cáceres. Now, she assumes the helm of Extremadura after 25 days of lurching, script twists and, above all, betraying her own words. It seems like a century has passed, but it was this past June 20 when she, not at all nervous, watched out of the corner of her eye the nine-minute speech she had posted on the lectern in the Assembly’s stone press room:
—I only have my word and my work.
Guardiola continued. “I am not going to give away advice. […] We will go to elections, if we must go. […] I cannot let into my government those who deny sexist violence, those who use the fat stroke, those who are dehumanizing immigrants, and those who unfurl a canvas and throw the LGTBI flag into a trash can […] I have done everything in my power. My promise and my land are not currency for anything. Thank you so much”. No member of the PP, neither regional nor national, had been so fiercely against Vox. Guardiola was convinced. Firm to her word, she dismissed the question time thus:
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– In no case would Vox enter a government of María Guardiola?
-No. Institutions cannot be used to ideologize.
Seven days later, however, she was already sitting in a law office outside of Extremadura with her faithful squire and number two in the party in the region, Abel Bautista, and the leader of Vox in Extremadura, Ángel Pelayo Gordillo. They all signed a 60-point agreement that materialized this Friday with the support of the five deputies of Santiago Abascal in the region and that have led to the proclamation of Guardiola as the first woman president of Extremadura.
Guardiola assumes the Vox speech
This Thursday, in the same place that he criticized his now government partner 25 days ago, he delivered his investiture speech, lasting 70 minutes and 18 pages. He assumed the story of the extreme right and announced that he will review the 34% of Extremadura territory that is protected in environmental matters. “This cannot continue like this,” he said, referring to the 60-measure pact that he signed a week ago with Vox. “The environmental protection of most of our territory will no longer be a drag on our growth. We will carry out all the necessary procedures to review the environmental protection of each area and we will analyze the possible uses in each place to promote compatible projects”. According to the Junta de Extremadura’s own data, the forest area of the region occupies more than 2.7 million hectares, that is, 65% of the region.
The acting president of the Junta de Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, this Friday. Jero Morales (EFE)
The new president also assumed the current Ministry of Equality, which will be integrated into the Presidency. It was also proposed as an objective for these four years “the completion of the AVE” in the region. However, the railway that currently runs through Extremadura is not an AVE, but a “fast train”.
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Until 2018, Extremadura was the only peninsular region of Spain that did not have long-distance railways. There were no Alvias either: trains that can travel up to 250 kilometers per hour, with more comfortable seats, with a cafeteria, with a radio, with headphones, with televisions: small pleasures that all users who make journeys of more than five hours opted for, except those from Extremadura. Today, yes, they already opt, but only in a part of Extremadura and with an average speed that does not even come close to 120 kilometers per hour.
The replica of Fernández Vara and Podemos
A journey that has also been criticized by the outgoing president, Guillermo Fernández Vara, who gave EL PAÍS this Friday his last interview as head of the Junta de Extremadura. “This region”, he has pointed out as the main reference of his 12-year term, “had a school failure rate above 50% of the Spanish average at the beginning of democracy. Today 10% have it, two points below the average. We are better off and education is what changes peoples”.
Already in the Assembly, the winner of the last regional elections, has criticized Guardiola’s speech. “He was missing a gene. I miss Extremadura ”, he said. “The main concerns of the people of Extremadura are unemployment, inflation, housing, climate change, relations with Portugal, social services and the LGTBI community, and he did not name any of them.” Vara will now drive the Extremaduran relay. It will be in autumn when the party will have a new leader. Socialist sources point to Miguel Ángel Gallardo, the mayor of Villanueva de la Serena, and the former Minister of Health, José María Vergeles, as names that are on the list.
“Do you know what is the phrase that people have repeated to me the most this week? I believed her, ”said the spokesperson for United We Can, Irene de Miguel, in her speech. “I, however, did not believe her. You have reached the Government in the worst way. This is a humiliating pact. You cannot be trusted.”
Vox’s turn
The leader of Vox in Extremadura, Ángel Pelayo Gordillo, has also taken the floor this Friday, where he has reproached Guardiola for not remembering much of his formation in his inauguration text. “I observed some striking gaps in his speech, he hardly mentioned the agreement signed with us. We hope that the competencies that we have assumed have the necessary material means for their development”. He also pointed to squatting as one of the main problems in the region. However, according to data from the Judicial Administration, home occupancies in Extremadura have dropped by 35% this year, standing at 45 throughout the territory. Regarding gender violence, Gordillo has said that “violence is violence and its perpetrators must fully serve their sentences.”
Today a new political cycle begins in Extremadura. Especially for Guardiola, who has jumped into national politics for criticizing his partner’s government and integrating it immediately after. This Thursday, in her inauguration speech, knowing that she has broken her word and that she will be a slab during her legislature, she quoted sideways a phrase from the journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales in her book on the bullfighter Juan Belmonte: “In the great Sometimes I always say something inappropriate. And this Friday, before the most important day of her political career, she released: “My principles are the same.”
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