Alfonso Rueda’s strategy of gaining municipal power in Galicia through pacts with defectors is extending to cities. The PP has allied with a former socialist councilwoman to take over the mayor’s office in Lugo, a city it has not governed for 27 years. The no-confidence motion was registered this Wednesday, just one day after the Xunta announced a position that both PSdeG and BNG link to the popular party’s move. These two parties, which govern the Lucense capital together, denounce that the position just published by the Ministry of Environment “seems tailor-made” for the councilwoman who will allow Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s successor to snatch an emblematic seat from the left just one year before the municipal elections. Lara Méndez, number two of the Galician socialists and former mayor of Lugo, warns that “if it is proven” that the position is for the PP’s ally, “it is not politics, it is corruption.”
“We do not rule out that both Elena Candia and María Reigosa will sit in the dock,” Rubén Arroxo, BNG spokesperson in Lugo, said this Wednesday, referring to the provincial leader of the PP who will become mayor and the defector councilwoman, respectively. The position in question is a service commission as head of the Coastline in Lugo, and Reigosa meets the requirements. The Galician Government denies that it is a position created for her. It argues that it is a position that has been vacant on other occasions because “its responsibility is brutal” and that its current announcement has nothing to do with the no-confidence motion.
The PP’s move takes place in the political cradle of the PSdeG leader, José Ramón Besteiro, and during a particularly complicated term for the Lucense socialists, who after the 2023 elections joined the BNG to form a government, adding only one more seat than Rueda’s party. Added to the accusations of sexual harassment that led to the resignation of José Tomé as president of the Lugo Provincial Council and the creation of a management committee, as he was also the party leader in the province, is the sudden death of the city’s socialist mayor, Paula Alvarellos, and two other councilors, Pablo Permuy and Olga López, in the last year. It was precisely Permuy’s death that caused the electoral list to move up and the now defector María Reigosa to enter the corporation. Reigosa took office as councilwoman on October 30, left the PSOE in January, and left the municipal group less than a month ago, assuring that she would not accept being part of a no-confidence motion. A few days ago, she changed her mind and announced in the press that she was considering joining the PP to oust the socialist mayor, Miguel Fernández.
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Rueda, who is on an official trip to China, already gave his approval to the pact with the defector last Monday. The president of the Xunta and of the Galician PP left the decision in the hands of the local group but defended his party’s “right” to govern Lugo because it was the most voted in 2023.
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