Political hell breaks loose in Granadilla

[Janet]

Hope you find this interesting ... from my website today:

All hell has broken loose in Granadilla, with a new regime taking over after opposition parties united to force out socialist mayor Jaime González Cejas with a motion of censure. The PSOE has retaliated by breaking off political pacts in the borough, but the upheaval doesn't stop there because the regional Government itself, which relies on pacts between the political parties, has itself been unsettled.

In Granadilla, strong warnings and a last minute ultimatum of political pact ruptures failed to make the Coalición Canaria withdraw the motion, and at midday yesterday a full session of the council witnessed incredible scenes, with one side of the chamber standing to applaud Cejas as he arrived, and the other, comprising the CC, PP, and Ciudadanos, remaining seated in stony silence. And after the complaints against the PSOE administration were read out, including the old familiars of illegal licences and corruption, the pleno confirmed the CC's José Domingo Regalado as mayor.

At the same time as shouts of "traitor" and "back-stabber" were ringing in the local council chamber, the Canarian Parliament itself was meeting, and the full effects of the Granadilla situation on the regional Government are yet to become clear since mutual support was a fundamental plank of the CC/PSOE pact in the Canaries. High level meetings will be held throughout today to determine how the PSOE at regional level will react.

Even further afield, it is far from clear how this will play out on the national stage, where no one party is able to rule absolutely and pacts are formed ... and then undermined by existing hostilities. Spain is already struggling politically in the face of a prospective third general election, and the Socialists are under pressure nationally to allow the Partido Popular to form a minority government to avoid that outcome, pressure which has been increased by recent regional elections in northern Spain in which the PSOE vote slipped. And within the Socialists themselves, party leader Pedro Sanchez is under siege from the PSOE's own grandees, including former PM Felipe González, for holding out for an election in which the party is likely to do even worse than it did on the last two occasions

Granadilla seems to be a microcosm of the situation in Spain, where corruption, or at least the accusation of corruption, is endemic, stability seems impossible to create, and visceral hatreds have to co-exist with political pragmatism ... and sometimes lose.

[Nova]

Wow, this makes Arona sound exemplary!  Almost... 

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

It is nice to have even a glimmer of hope if corrupt politicians are forced out of office.