Valle de Villaverde (EFE) “very far away” and the connections are complicated.
It is with this feeling that the nearly 600 residents of this ‘border’ town hall await these elections, of whom slightly more than a third have the right to vote, because the rest are registered throughout Biscay.
Voters from Valle de Villaverde will go to cast their ballots at the only polling station that this town hall has, which is located in the Town Hall, governed by the PRC for almost 30 years due to lack of competition, although this time it will have a independent candidacy.
mongrel territory
Long gone are the clashes over the municipal limits with Trucios-Turtzioz, the neighboring Basque town, from a territory that feels “mestizo” and lives with “absolute normality” its administrative inclusion in Cantabria, despite being an “island” within Vizcaya, where most of the residents of this Cantabria town hall live.
“We are much more influenced by what happens in the town than by what happens in the Government of Cantabria, which we see as a bit far away,” admits Alberto Marquina, owner of the “La Capitana” restaurant, one of the only three establishments in Villaverde Valley hospitality.
This innkeeper from Bilbao, who runs a place with a deep Basque flavour, a bar with a wide range of skewers and grilled T-bone steak, explains to EFE that almost all the services and providers that serve the town come from Vizcaya, because Cantabria “it is very far”. “Santander is more than a hundred kilometers away and Bilbao 35”, he specifies.
And he points out that, except for the general secretary of the PRC and current president of the Government of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, who had a “very close” relationship with the regionalist mayor of the municipality for 21 years, Pedro Mari Llaguno, until his death, the rest of the candidates visit the town “once every four years, during the campaign”.
little field life
In fact, according to what he recounts, in the previous electoral processes “very little” campaign life has been lived and with “very little” information about the programs of the parties that are presented to the regional Executive. “More than anything, the information of the town, but not at the level of Cantabria,” Alberto Marquina abounds, for whom voting day is “a good time to see the people of the town that you don’t see often.”
This interest focused on the issues that concern the people is the reason that the current mayor, Esther Gómez, also alleges, so that the PRC does not have opposition in the City Council. “Those from the town vote for those from the town and presenting a list headed by someone from Cabezón de la Sal, for example, does not make sense. Nobody votes for him, ”she argues.
The clearest reflection is the result of the last municipal and regional elections, where close to 200 residents voted, who gave overwhelming support to the PRC, which does not seem to change in these next elections, because, according to Gómez, Valle de Villaverde feels “well treated” by the Cantabrian government, which means that there are no movements against maintaining the current ‘status quo’ of the town.
The municipality enjoys the advantages that the Executive of Cantabria offers to towns at risk of depopulation, with high subsidies for works or measures such as an ATM or preparation in the pharmacy of pill boxes adapted to the elderly population.
The only ‘black point’ is full compliance with the health agreement signed with the Basque Government, which still has deficiencies in access to medical records.
“If they continue to treat us well, there is no problem,” says Esther Gómez, for whom voting day in this town is not far from what happens in other places, with the same hours for the polling station, although time is ticking ” more slowly”, because the few residents with the right to vote come “little by little”. “One comes after guarding the cows, others in the morning or in the afternoon, each one chooses the time,” she recalls.
And he admits that what is fast is the counting of the votes deposited in the polls, in which two hundred ballots are rarely exceeded. “If there is no problem, everything goes very fast,” concludes Gómez. EFE
By Francisco Bustamante