The operation by Alfonso Rueda’s PP to end 27 years of left-wing governments in Lugo was completed this Thursday. With a citizen protest at the doors of the town hall, the motion of no confidence orchestrated by the party leader in the province, Elena Candia, has triumphed. Candia was elected new mayor by a single vote, thanks to the 12 votes from her party and that of a socialist defector, María Reigosa, who joined the corporation only six months ago due to the death of three PSOE councilors. Reigosa joined the Populars and caused the fall of the PSdeG mayor, Miguel Fernández. “What a shame to tarnish the mayoralty of Lugo in this way!” lamented Fernández before entering the plenary amid applause from opponents of the motion and shouts against defection.
Candia, the new mayor of Lugo, is the provincial baroness of the party and was previously mayor of Mondoñedo and president of the Provincial Council. She obtained the latter position in 2015 also thanks to another PSOE defector. It only lasted three months, the time it took for her ex-socialist partner to renegotiate with his former party. These days she has justified the motion of no confidence due to the “instability” she believes the PSOE and BNG bipartite suffered. In a dull plenary in which not even the new rulers of Lugo showed the slightest enthusiasm, Candia cited everything from labor conflicts with the municipal staff to breaches in “animal welfare,” “a senselessly designed bike lane,” or “waste of public money.”
Her speech, already holding the baton of command, was delivered in time with the shouts of “Candia, come out to the balcony” uttered sarcastically by her detractors from outside. The mayor proclaimed herself a “convinced constitutionalist” and said she came from “a very humble but honest family”: “I never schemed, nor do I scheme, nor will I scheme.” She received the protest gathering calling her “mafiosa” and “shameless.”
Just one day before the motion of no confidence was signed, the Xunta announced a head position in the Ministry of Environment with requirements met by Reigosa, the defector councilor. PSOE and BNG denounced that it was a “tailor-made” position and warned it could be part of the operation to unseat the local government of Lugo. The complaint forced the defector to publicly promise she would not apply for the post. The PP has not yet clarified what powers the ex-socialist will have in the new municipal government.
The outgoing mayor has reproached the PP for “political opportunism,” which took advantage of the death of three socialist councilors that brought the defector into the corporation: “It is a political maneuver built on pain.” Fernández called it “morally unacceptable” and the socialist municipal spokesperson, Ana María González, even stated that Candia began negotiations with her new partner even before she took office. It is, she added, a motion of no confidence born from a “conspiracy in the corridors” and a “web of interests.”
Rueda, who sent his secretary general, Paula Prado, as support, embraced Candia after the plenary ended, and blessed the motion of no confidence despite the controversy. The party, however, has avoided the word “defector” and has renamed the operation as a “motion of impulse.” The president of the Xunta and the PP defends the maneuver by asking for “respect for democracy.” He argues that Pedro Sánchez also came to La Moncloa through a motion of no confidence in 2018 and, regarding dealing with a defector, recalls that the socialists agreed a few months ago with a PP renegade to take over the government of Noia (A Coruña). The PP accuses BNG and PSdeG, who until now shared the bipartite in Lugo, of “doing everything possible to intimidate” the councilors supporting the maneuver and has warned against “the tension” sown in Lugo.
The leader of PSdeG, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, emphasizes that the PP statutes impose a “very serious infraction” on those who, textually, “belonging to an institutional group of the party use or take advantage of defectors from other parties to constitute or change government majorities in public institutions.” This Thursday is not the first time in Besteiro’s hometown that a socialist defector has enabled a right-wing government. It is the third. The first was in the eighties, when Fabriciano González voted for mayor Vicente Quiroga. In 1991 it happened again, with the PSOE-elected councilor Antonio Mouronte facilitating the election of the Popular Tomás Notario. These days, a petition has arisen on Change.org to erect a monument in the city in memory of these three ex-socialists. “Sign this petition and together let’s make the city of Lugo remember and learn from its history,” the appeal reads.