Yurena García, Pura Martín, Elena Cabello and José Luis Gómez resigned yesterday from the delegations assigned by the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, as mayors of the municipal government. Each one maintains the act of councilor and continues to belong to the PSOE. The four deliver their skills for consistency. Together with Dácil León, Juan Sebastián Roque and Luis García, they formed the councilor’s dissenting group in a process that divided the local government in half in 2020.
They disagree with the support given by the PSOE to Mena as a candidate for Mayor of Arona in 2023, because it contradicts the “firm decision not to support and its opposition” to it communicated to this group of councilors by the federal, regional and insular executives ” on several occasions.”
In a statement, they say that they were disciplined and obedient, that they complied with the Statutes, the Regulations and all the indications of the PSOE bodies, “Reaching the extreme of participating in meetings organized by the PSOE itself to unseat, through a motion of censure, the mayor in coordination with other municipal political forces.”
The party’s lack of pronouncement on the sentence that annulled the expulsion of José Julián Mena from the PSOE is another argument to justify his resignation from the delegations. “We do not understand the non-action of the party in the face of the clear pronouncement of the judge in the face of an incomplete expulsion file, but not illegal and that the party decided not to appeal,” they express in their statement.
Two years of conflict
The beginning of the rupture of the municipal group is placed in May 2020. As another basis for their decision, they recall the “seamless” support for the mayor that they conveyed to him and to socialist leaders in the Casa del Pueblo. Meeting in which they conditioned the unity of the local government (with an absolute majority) so that Mena would remove from the management “people outside the group and the City Council, people who even today continue to interfere and influence municipal public management.”
They confirm that during the last two years they transferred to the organs of the PSOE «all the documentary information of the public management in the City Council that was required of us». For all these reasons, “we cannot continue to accept and continue to support Mena’s management, which has taken the municipality to unthinkable limits of chaos and ineffectiveness, a situation in which we do not want to be complicit.”
José Luis Gómez renounces his competence in Youth, Yurena García to Citizen Participation, Elena Cabello to Social Services and Pura Martín (who has been on intermittent leave) to Seniors and Parties. «The delivery of our delegations supposes only the materialization of not agreeing with Mena and his way of doing politics today, of managing the public and allowing interference in municipal areas; what does not make the City Council be independent, autonomous and work for the neighbors in their decision-making ».
The four councilors recall that the Socialist Party “stated and pointed out that its candidate and the person who would lead the PSOE in Arona would be Dácil León.” This councilor, dismissed by the mayor on January 22, 2021, yesterday showed her solidarity with her colleagues and yesterday showed her desire to leave the party “right now”, but “I do not do it because they have summoned me to a meeting”. Call transmitted last week and in which he was informed of who will be the candidate for Mayor of Arona: José Julián Mena. “I am surprised by the turn of the PSOE in the management of the Arona situation,” he pointed out before admitting “that Mena can be considered a candidate.” “We can’t do anything now,” he sentenced yesterday.
Since 2020
The conflict between the PSOE and José Julián Mena is exposed after the dismissal of Luis García (also expelled from the party and today non-attached mayor) as Councilor for Urban Planning (June 22, 2020) due to loss of confidence. It occurred after the mayor exposed to the municipal government some recordings that sought to demonstrate alleged external interference in the management of the area and that he transferred them to the Prosecutor’s Office (filed complaint).
The disregard of Mena and the dismissal of García divided the absolute majority of the municipal government in half, despite the mediation of the insular, regional and national bodies of the PSOE, which has kept the socialist group in Arona with a manager since August 2020. On November 13 of that year, Mena is expelled from the party and the court annuls the measure on September 27, 2021. On August 17, the judge agrees to the provisional dismissal of the complaint filed by three councilors from the sector critic against Mena and the eventual former secretary, Pedro Javier Hernández.
