José Manuel Bermúdez (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1966) had wanted to leave municipal politics for a long time, but his party, Coalición Canaria, would not allow it. He is hungry for power, to command beyond the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, of which he has been mayor since 2011, with a brief one-year hiatus between 2019 and 2020, in which he believed that the world was coming down on him. . When he was sent to the opposition, he was left with nothing, without what had been his livelihood throughout his adult life, institutional politics. To make matters worse, his party did not respond when he asked for the position of senator for the Autonomous Community, a position that fell to Fernando Clavijo, defeated candidate for the presidency of the Autonomous Community, who chose the national appraisal (in the Canary Islands he disappeared in the reform of the Statute of Autonomy of 2018) so that the Supreme Court discharged him from the two charges with which the legislature began, the Cranes and Reparos cases.
The Canarian Coalition and the PSOE maintain their tense pulse for the mayor’s office of Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Further
Bermúdez has saved the offense. And now he wants to try again. The plans go through to leave the City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife after the elections on May 28. Fly to national politics but without giving up leading the Canary Coalition to replace a Fernando Clavijo who inexcusably needs to touch power to survive. The scenarios that he manages and that he tells whoever asks him privately are various but with the same objectives: he has to get the best possible result in the City Council but goes from number 3 to Parliament on the island of Tenerife, which would allow him, in the worst case (not to repeat as mayor), to dedicate himself to parliamentary life. But that would be a consolation prize. If Clavijo does not manage to enter the Government of the Canary Islands, not even as vice president, since he has been begging the PSOE for a long time, and he left through the back door of politics, Bermúdez could once again claim for himself the position of senator for the Autonomous Community . But he prefers that of national deputy for the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to replace the veteran Ana Oramas.
It is a position with stripes from which he believes that he could make the necessary organic movements to take over the general secretary of the party, which is also in his wish list for the autumn-winter season. Unless its current incumbent, Clavijo, obtained a good result (no poll has given it at the moment) or managed to grab some good plots of power that would help satisfy the anxieties of so many hundreds of public officials who were left with nothing after the disaster of 2019.
This would mean that, in the most remote of possible scenarios, she would abandon municipal politics at the end of the year to run in the general elections occupying the candidacy that the historic Ana Oramas will abandon in this national legislature.
Bermúdez would be replaced in the mayor’s office of Santa Cruz de Tenerife by number three on his list, Alfonso Cabello, with whom he has made many friends in this term. The replacement has already been agreed upon and has been accepted – let it be known willingly – by the woman who is in second place on the list, Councilor Gladys de León.
Mayor Bermúdez denies everything: “I am not going to leave the mayoralty, and with my vote, neither the PSOE nor Podemos will obtain the mayoralty. Quite the contrary, what I aspire to is to increase the majority at the polls to continue being mayor of Santa Cruz, and to represent our capital in the Parliament of the Canary Islands as mayor”, he responded to this newspaper when asked about this operation. multiband.
“I believe that Tenerife and the Canary Islands cannot be built with their backs turned to Santa Cruz, as the Socialists have claimed over the years,” he adds to strengthen his previous statement. “The rest is intentional gossip that other parties put into circulation to try to wear me down before public opinion. It’s political fiction.”
In his defense, he recalls that there are many opponents of his and his party who have done a double. “Manolo Domínguez”, president of the Popular Party of the Canary Islands and candidate for the presidency of the Government, “was a deputy and mayor of Los Realejos, and Patricia Hernández”, his most direct rival in the City Council and also a candidate for Parliament, “was a deputy and mayoress of Santa Cruz; not to mention Casimiro Curbelo”, president of the Cabildo de La Gomera and regional deputy, at the head of a parliamentary group of three that has conditioned the regional political life these last eight years.
But to Bermúdez, the case of Pedro Martín, from the PSOE, “who ran for president of the Cabildo de Tenerife and mayor of Guía de Isora at the same time seems more relevant than all these examples: that is already a lot,” he stresses.
That position, that of president of the Cabildo, was always one of the most desired by José Manuel Bermúdez, eager to abandon municipal politics to move on to other instances that would allow him to progress. “Me?” He answers that statement, “I have never opted for anything; Another thing is that my name sounds like everything”, he has responded to questions from this newspaper.
None of the examples provided by Bermúdez resemble his current political circumstances. He starts as the favorite to win the elections in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in a tough fight with the socialist Patricia Hernández, but he would have to agree again with the Popular Party to stay in government. He would suffer again defecting councilor of Ciudadanos Evelyn Alonsowith which he could not get along these three years and that the Canarian Coalition has had to place on the list as independent in compliance with the agreement that was signed before a notary in 2019 so that his disobedience to the orders of Citizens would allow the motion of censure to prosper that returned the mayoralty to Bermúdez.
He knows that this will be a unique opportunity not only to progress institutionally, but also organically. Many voices within his party are pessimistic regarding the electoral result, and there are already several polls (this week was the OK Daily) who predict for CC a third regional position behind the PSOE and the PP. The swords are raised in the party and many old glories (said to be those who have been touching power or its surroundings for three decades) are positioning themselves to run for the general secretary in the face of a re-foundation that seems to have its epicenter on the island of Tenerife. Bermúdez is there and is expected. Or, as he says, his name sounds.
