The Spanish Socialist Workers Party will defend its municipal hegemony in the South on 28M, where it achieved five absolute majorities in the last elections (Arona, Adeje, Guía de Isora, Fasnia and Vilaflor de Chasna), compared to the only ones obtained by the Canary Islands Coalition (San Miguel de Abona) and the Popular Party (Santiago del Teide).
The socialist dominance at the polls can also be seen in the regional distribution of councilors among the three political forces. The results of the 2019 elections ratified the solid territorial implantation of the PSOE, a discreet role of CC (although with a more or less uniform presence in the city councils) and the almost testimonial role of the PP, which has not finished hitting the key local leaders, with the exception of Emilio Navarro in Santiago del Teide.
The PSOE obtained in the nine municipalities of the South a total of 30,986 votes and 73 councilors, more than the sum of its two main political adversaries: CC (17,863 votes and 47 councilors) and PP (9,993 ballots and 24 representatives). This distribution of councilors determined the seven absolute majorities outlined and two government alliances, in Granadilla (CC-PP) and in Arico (CC-PA-PP).
With these results on the table and the voting expectations of the main political formations, the electoral committees direct their strategies for the 28M to consolidate the seats conquered and recover a leading role in the rest of the municipalities of the region, either through of a reversal of the majorities or through government pacts, the most feasible way a priori.
In one case or the other, the mobilization of the voters will be key, which is the great pending issue in the three municipalities with the largest population in the South (Arona, Granadilla and Adeje), which present abstention levels well above 50%, a reality that is repeated every four years and that José Adrián García Rojas, professor of Political Science at the University of La Laguna, attributes to a great demographic evolution and the lack of roots in municipal politics by foreign citizens who settle in these municipalities.
In addition to trying to consolidate the absolute majorities obtained in 2019, the PSOE concentrates its priorities on the two squares where, a priori, the great struggles of the South will be fought: Arona and Granadilla de Abona, the municipalities with the largest population. In Arona, the closest thing to the mother of all battles will be lived, after the PSOE split in two in the current mandate and a new political formation emerged from the split, Más por Arona. The socialist leadership has played a rebuttal and has closed ranks with José Julián Mena, after he won in court, against the wind of the opposition and the tide of his own party, his continuity in the Mayor’s Office and his third consecutive candidacy.
Maintaining Arona is crucial for the PSOE, and the support of its constituents – more than 9,500 votes received the candidacy led by Mena in 2019 – can be decisive in deciding the majority of the Cabildo. In addition, nobody hides the strategic and political importance of the municipality, as well as its tourist potential and the expectations of urban development in highly valued land bags. The CC, the main a priori adversary of the PSOE, can take its toll on the instability of its municipal group, after none of the four councilors elected in 2019 have finished their mandate. But Francisco Linares, island leader of the party, is convinced that CC will have the key “yes or yes” to the next local government.
The Socialists also make it a high priority to wrest the Mayor’s Office of Granadilla de Abona from CC, a position that José Domingo Regalado, mayor for six years, defends tooth and nail, who has the support of the entire apparatus and the nationalist machinery to achieve a victory on 28M -unlike what happened when Regalado won the motion of no confidence-, as was demonstrated a couple of weeks ago in San Isidro during the presentation of the plank, which has incorporated a couple of latest signings time for councilors who have abandoned the PP. Nationalist sources say that maintaining the Mayor’s Office in Granadilla is “vital” for the interests of CC in the region and for the Cabildo. Jennifer Miranda (PSOE), who won the nationalist candidacy by almost 600 votes in 2019, will face her second attempt.
A third municipality in which the CC and PSOE copper will also fight is San Miguel de Abona, where the nationalist Arturo González achieved a scratched absolute majority in 2019, which he now hopes to revalidate. Together with Regalado, the councilman from San Miguel represents the greatest political capital of CC in the South, as the results confirm.
For its part, in Arico the scenario looks more open, especially after the current mayor, Sebastián Martín (Primero Arico) announced that he is hanging up his boots The PSOE, which has 5 councillors, and CC, with 4, will measure their forces in a City Council in which the dispersion of acronyms and pacts to various parties predominate. CC speaks of “favorable” expectations and “serious options” to assume the baton.
For its part, the PP, in addition to assuming that Emilio Navarro, leader of the Tenerife PP, will achieve its third absolute majority in Santiago del Teide -the surveys indicate this-, focuses its objectives on increasing its municipal presence throughout the area access to governments such as Granadilla and Arico through pacts, without losing sight of what happens in Arona, although, behind closed doors, the insular and regional leaderships do not rule out “some surprise”. Unlike the PSOE and CC, which have representatives in the nine town halls, the PP does not have councilors in Fasnia or Vilaflor de Chasna.
Another of the attractions of election night in the South will be in Adeje, where the socialist José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, one of the historic heavyweights of the PSOE from Tenerife and the Canary Islands, will go for his ninth consecutive victory (all have been by absolute majority, except the first), which would lead him to add at the end of the next term 40 years in the Mayor’s Office. The polls point in that direction.
