He is a militant of PSOE since 1994 and has always understood that politics with a vocation for service is for a while, not forever, and that is why he considers that the time has come to retire. He has his teaching position at the IES de La Matanza and has never tried to live from politics. He will say goodbye to the Plenary on Tuesday, after four mandates, one of them interrupted when he agreed to the Government of the Canary Islands as Deputy Minister of Institutional Relations. He leaves with his head held high and at the right time, although he will continue to fight and contribute to his party as one more affiliate.
–The announcement of his resignation surprised many people. Was it a sudden decision?
“No, it was very thoughtful and I had been considering it for a long time, but the pandemic delayed the decision. I ran for mayor four times and I’ve always understood that in politics with a vocation for service you can’t stay forever. I have done a part of the work, the one that corresponded to me. It is enough to remember where the PSOE was when I arrived at the City Council in 1999 and where it is now, in 2021. But the project has to continue to grow and find new sources of enthusiasm and motivation and that is why I think it was time for a change. There have been no internal conflicts or problems, on the contrary. I’m not going anywhere else.”
-How do you prepare for the farewell?
“I already said goodbye once, in 2011, when I went to the Government of the Canary Islands and it was harder, because it was on the fly and emotionally it did cost me. This time I am calmer. Firstly, because I have been thinking about it for longer and secondly, because if we examine a little the work that has been done, it has been highly valued by the citizens and proof of this is the number of votes in the last elections. You also see it on the street, because the neighbors transmit it to you. In addition, I think that the CC itself has noticed that the PSOE was not just another opposition group, but the only one, and we have demonstrated with facts that our proposals were very well founded, very rigorous and based on concrete facts. Even the attitude of the government group that has an absolute majority is already different”.
-In a municipality in which a party has been governing with an absolute majority for 40 years, how do you make opposition?
“Sometimes it is difficult for me to explain in the same match what is happening with the PSOE in La Orotava. After much thought, it must be said that several factors come together. The political offer here has always been very diverse and plural, up to four different formations have been presented in a municipality that is not the capital. And that, perhaps, is because the left makes a policy that is too theoretical and differentiated while CC makes political pragmatism. After the dictatorship, there were several neighborhoods without drinking water, schools, unpaved streets and without the minimum infrastructure, and CC focused on solving those problems while the left continued discussing theoretical issues that divided it. Thus, it managed to consolidate itself and launch an electoral machinery that continues to function to this day. Right now, in 2022, it is when there are fewer projects for the municipality. In the last two terms, he has not been able to launch major initiatives to say that La Orotava is moving in a certain direction because he is not even capable of understanding what is happening.
-Who would you like to preside over the PSOE list in 2023?
“María Jesús Alonso has all the ballots. She is the secretary of the local group, a member of the regional Executive, she was elected in the last congress, she has been part of the Island Executive and knows the house from the inside. I do not highlight youth, nor that she is a woman, but people with experience, who are capable and can dedicate time to it because local politics demands a lot of work”.
-You always said that your party wanted to change the course of the municipality. Have you made it?
“Yes, and there is one thing that I am very proud of and that is the great capacity for influence that we have had in recent years as an opposition party against one with an absolute majority. We have achieved it with a political strategy, but also with rigor to start from some facts and build a proposal. In some cases, this rigorous work was impossible for the CC to reject and that is why our strategy has been to make it see where it was making a mistake and if it wanted to change its position it had to be at the cost of telling the public that it did not want to support it by assuming positions purely electoralists and that has a cost”.
