Lope Afonso, Vice President of the Cabildo de Tenerife and former mayor of Puerto de la Cruz, is the leading candidate to assume the presidency of the Popular Party in Tenerife on May 24. A Law graduate from the University of La Laguna, who will be 46 this August, Afonso is set to replace Emilio Navarro at the helm of the popular party in Tenerife. Afonso will announce his candidacy within the next few hours after the PP Tenerife initiated the process yesterday to refresh its organisational structure. The Insular Board of Directors convened yesterday afternoon at the headquarters of the PP of Tenerife, where they agreed to hold the Insular Congress on May 24 and form an Organising Committee, which will be led by Regional Deputy Luz Reverón.
A total of 580 delegates (464 elected and 116 ex officio) will take part in the meeting scheduled for Saturday, May 24, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, during which the new organisational positions of the party on the island will be elected.
With these arrangements in place, candidacies can be submitted starting today, but all indications suggest it will be Lope Afonso succeeding Emilio Navarro, the mayor of Santiago del Teide, who has presided over Tenerife’s PP for the past four years. Afonso already acts as one of the key figures in the popular party in Tenerife, particularly due to his leadership in the town hall, where he governs in coalition with the Canary party and oversees the tourism sector, in addition to being vice president. With exceptional negotiation skills, he holds the complete trust of Manuel Domínguez, the president of the popular party in the Canaries.
Another significant advantage for Lope Afonso is the strong electoral performance of PP Tenerife in the recent elections of May 2023 to the Cabildo. The Portuense politician’s candidacy secured eight councillors, just behind the two most successful parties (PSOE with 11 councillors; and CC with 10), representing one of the best outcomes for conservatives in the island’s democratic history. Thanks to nearly 80,000 votes garnered (30,000 more than in the previous local elections), the PP was able to establish a government in collaboration with CC, maintaining excellent relations between both parties.
