2023-12-28 16:54:53
Pamplona already has a reminder to the victims in its streets. To the victims of the bulls. This Wednesday, the mayor of the city ordered the installation of commemorative paving stones on the pavement to remember those killed in the Sanfermines bull runs. She feared that the new mayor would not implement the measure. Historical memory for the crimes of Franco’s regime, no. Pamplona preserves the largest monument to the dead of the Franco side after the Valley of the Fallen. Memory for the gored, of course.
It was the last decision by Cristina Ibarrola, from UPN, before the motion of censure that this Thursday handed the mayor’s office to Joseba Asiron, from EH Bildu, by an absolute majority (15 votes to 11). At the same time, Alberto Núñez Feijóo used the change to declare that the PSOE is no longer a constitutional party. In fact, he has already said it so many times that he doesn’t even attract attention. Spain must be the only European country that only has one democratic party. Yours, of course.
Everything is a drama in Spanish politics and a motion of censure in a provincial capital could not fail to be so. UPN’s anger was logical. Nobody likes to be left without power. It was the rhetoric that was blown up by the party’s habit of considering itself the only one that defends the interests of Navarra. The election results do not say that.
UPN has nine councilors in Pamplona out of a total of twenty-seven. With 30.3% of the votes, it was the first force in the May elections and gained one councilor and 2,939 votes ahead of Bildu. The left-wing forces had an absolute majority with 16 councilors, but the socialists were not going to give their support to Bildu before the general elections. It is something that the right now denounces in scandal as if it were a great surprise, but they knew that everything could change with the formation of the new central government after the investiture.
The day before the motion, Ibarrola stated that the PSOE will pay a very high price for its vote: “I predict to the socialist party a disappearance of the institutions, of course from Pamplona, quite quickly.”
This already happened years ago, but in a direction opposite to that indicated by Ibarrola. In the regional elections of 2007, the PSOE obtained 74,158 votes and came third. The Navarrese leadership of the party wanted to lend its support to Nafarroa Bai, a Basque nationalist coalition that took advantage of the illegalization of the nationalist left to be second, and remove UPN from the presidency of the Government.
Zapatero vetoed the decision and forced the Navarrese socialists to abstain and allow UPN to remain in power. Party voters took note. The PSOE plummeted in 2011 to 51,238 votes. There was still room to continue sinking. In 2014, Rubalcaba again imposed the veto from Ferraz to stop the party’s desire in Navarra to present a motion of censure against the UPN Government that needed the support of Bildu. A year later, many of its voters once again asked themselves if voting for the PSOE only served to keep the right in power. The party rushed to 45,164 votes in 2015, leaving it as the fifth political force.
There is a pattern to this evolution. The further the PSOE moved away from reaching agreements with the nationalists, the more it fell at the polls. Contrary to what Ibarrola says will happen from this plenary session.
For UPN, it has always been essential to keep the PSOE away from a pact with nationalist forces. Without that guarantee, it will be very difficult for him to come to power in Navarra, even if it is the party with the most votes in the elections. Ibarrola began his mandate knowing that he could not approve budgets only with the votes of the right.
Hence the reaction of the outgoing mayor, who said on Thursday in plenary that the socialist councilors were “four traitors who have ordered them what to do and who have carried out a betrayal of Pamplona.” She also suggested that her safety will be in jeopardy. She said that she will not have an escort – no one had asked her that – and she blamed the new mayor “for everything that could happen to me.”
The strategy of UPN and PP was to constantly relate this motion of censure to the era of terrorism, eleven years after the end of ETA. Javier Esparza recovered the language of that time a few days ago with some dark words: “The PSN and Bildu are going to do everything possible to exterminate us, but we are the main force on this earth.”
Asiron returns to the mayor’s office of the city that he presided between 2015 and 2019. He laughed when journalists later asked him if his government would serve as a piece of a plan for independence: “Poor me, how could I do such a thing.” His priorities: “That there are no people sleeping on the street. That is my first objective, social policies, and also a social housing plan.”
Faced with the attempt by UPN and PP to irritate the new political stage, the new mayor said that “anyone has the right to walk down the street without anyone disrespecting them and that also goes for the councilors.” He stressed that the two right-wing parties “are necessary forces in this city and represent an important part of it.” Pamplona belongs to all its citizens: “You cannot love your city and despise a part of it.”
That is not Cristina Ibarrola’s position. She wanted to make it clear that she would never make an agreement with Bildu and she did so with an unpleasant classist comment. “I would never support Bildu no matter what. Never. I would rather scrub stairs,” she said with a disgusted face.
He can always dedicate himself to polishing the cobblestones of the dead of the bulls, the only legacy of his brief mayoralty.
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