Surprisingly, the scare over Vox’s entry into representative institutions in the last regional and local elections has been accompanied by a sigh of relief: they are not going to be decisive anywhere. It’s admirable how quickly we get rid of complex problems and concerns. It seems convenient to me to point out that Vox has found a clearer field thanks to the high level of abstention: in the regional ones it even grew slightly and stood at 42.80% of the citizens with the right to vote and in the municipal ones it has reached truly amazing levels that no one has opened their mouths about. in the palms of Gran Canaria More than 45% of voters abstained, 46% in Puerto del Rosario, 46.09% in Telde, and 49.46% in Santa Lucía de Tirajana. in Santa Cruz de Tenerife more than 41% of voters stayed at home. But what is more immediately worrying: there is a place where Vox is decisive. One of the main tourist municipalities of Tenerife: Granadilla de Abona.
In the south of Tenerife Vox has made a quantum leap. And he has done it, precisely, thanks to the terrifying abstentionism that has been registered. In Arona – where a narcissistic and agoraphobic mayor and thousands of internal disputes ended with the socialist government – no less than 61.21% of voters abstained: a brutal disaffection that indicates an insurmountable democratic disappointment. This flight of the voter made it very easy to remove a councilor. It was enough for Vox to get 1,788 votes to get two. In Adeje, where José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga has governed since the Big Bang, 58.4% of potential voters refused to waste time, so that with 713 votes Vox put a mayor in his pocket. It had to happen somewhere and it happened in Granadilla de Abona. 51.8% abstention and two councilors for Vox with 1,190 votes. With a differential particularity: the extreme right will decide the future government of Granadilla.
The absolute majority in the corporation is thirteen councilors. The PSOE obtained eleven, Canarian Coalition ten and the Popular Party two. For coalitions and conservatives to govern, it is essential that the Vox councilors join them or, at least, abstain in the election of the new mayor. Elected and everything will need a majority to approve municipal budgets, reform the General Planning Plan or prioritize investments. Vox will condition the municipal management of Granadilla on a daily basis in the next four years: 52,500 inhabitants and budgets that far exceed 56 million euros. And the ultras have a clear message in the south of Tenerife that they repeated in their meetings and billboards during the weeks of the campaign: if the south has problems, serious problems such as unemployment, infrastructure or public safety, their basic origin is none other than immigrants: the thousands and thousands of foreigners (from the EU and Latin America, but also, to a lesser extent, Africans) who have settled in the three mentioned municipalities in the last twenty years. One of the Vox councilors elected in Arona referred to the El Fraile neighborhood as a “very ugly” ghetto that must be removed because it is a source of “tensions and problems.” Once their organization in the Canary Islands has been restructured, with representatives and public funding (the four Vox deputies in Parliament will have their own group and around 300,000 euros per year) they will focus on the tourist south and the growth of the immigrant population. Do you know that almost 60% of the employment that has been created in the Canary Islands in the last two years – cheap employment and discontinuous permanent employment, as always – has been achieved by community workers and Latin Americans residing on the Islands? Vox knows it. And he will repeat it. Unceasingly. Sowing anger, hate and fear.
