Few mayors in Spain can boast ten consecutive victories at the polls. And all, except the first, by absolute majority. In case of Jose Miguel Rodriguez Fraga (PSOE), in charge of the Adeje City Council since 1987, is the paradigm of an incontestable leadership on which he has consolidated a long-term project while knocking down political opponents of all colors every four years, while weaving what he himself has defined as a “coexistence society”. At the same time, Adeje climbed to the top of the most sought-after European tourist destinations. In fact, the southern municipality today boasts the highest concentration of four and five star hotels in the entire continent.
Rodríguez Fraga has applied a recipe that has been infallible throughout the 36 years that he has remained in the Mayor’s Office and that he revealed days before 28M in an interview with DIARIO DE AVISOS: “Set a course, be clear about what must be done and learn from people who know. Those have been the coordinates of his management, to which he has applied one of the characteristics that define his character, prudence, an essential trait when it comes to setting priorities and setting times in politics.
His first years in the City Council, at the end of the 1980s, coincided with the great tourist boom in the region. Adejera and southern society was facing the final stage of a vertiginous transition from the agricultural to the tertiary sector. Young people abandoned their studies attracted by the magnet of easy money from construction and hospitality.
Rodríguez Fraga remembers how “they waited for the boys at the doors of the schools and institutes to place them in the job market, taking advantage of that strong development.” The outlook was still bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, and this was understood by the young mayor, who began to be haunted by a question: “What will become of these boys, without training, in the future?”. That question brought the Adeje Summer University as an answer. A measure that meant a whole declaration of intent for the society of Adejera.
The mayor of Adejero confesses to being a romantic of the generation of socialist leaders led by Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, who took over the country to lead it to the “Promised Land” after a long journey through the desert.
An admirer of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, for his “social commitment” and his “concept of State”, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga misses the fact that values such as those projected by the late socialist leader have lost weight in politics and that the pim-pam- pum dominates the current scenario, aggravated by the proximity of an imminent appointment with the polls.
After a mandate marked by the pandemic, in which Spain saw the ears of the wolf in a hotel in Adeje, the dream councilor has added another electoral success. His list obtained 13 of the 21 councilors in contention on May 28, which will lead him to assume the baton for the tenth time next Saturday and lead a term that will take him up to 40 years as the City Council presidency. He confesses that he does not lack enthusiasm or projects, among which the Central Park stands out, his great commitment to the environment, and the construction of the largest film sets in Europe.
His party won in seven of the nine municipalities in the southern region, but the pacts will reduce the scenarios where these victories will be staged. This is not the case of Adeje, the PSOE’s safest bet.
